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WASHINGTON (CNN) - The Senate has approved a free trade pact known
as CAFTA that includes five Central American countries and the Dominican
Republic.
The vote Thursday night was 54-45 in favor of the agreement, which
President Bush had championed as a way of "strengthening democracy and
advancing prosperity" in the Western Hemisphere.
The White House launched an aggressive lobbying effort for the trade
pact after it ran into a buzzsaw of opposition from lawmakers from sugar-
and textile-producing states facing potential competition from imports,
including a number of Republicans who have supported Bush's past free
trade efforts.
In the end, 12 GOP senators broke ranks to vote no, but the White House
carried the vote with the support of 10 Democrats and independent Sen. Jim
Jeffords of Vermont.
If approved by the House, the pact would remove trade barriers between
the United States and Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa
Rica and the Dominican Republic. | 