CAFTA (the Central American Free Trade Agreement) is a great follow-up on NAFTA, which has been a boon to trade and, with unemployment at 5.2%, completely undermines the hackneyed notion that trade destroys jobs. But, on cue, Big Labor is opposing ratification and is being joined by Big Sugar.

While free trade benefits all Americans at the expense of the tiny, protected industries that fear competition, Amity Shlaes explains the more important dimensions of this debate.

By ratifying the agreement, Congress would show Latin America that it can deliver rewards for progress and friendship. It seems incomprehensible that domestic lobbies could block CAFTA. Yet they may do so.

And why?

The sugar lobby alone has a grip on Congress that belies the size of its constituency. Some 17 percent of all political contributions from the agricultural sector come from sugar.

Sugar, unlike some agricultural products, is not harvested in one or two states. There are sugar beet growers in the North and Midwest, and there is cane in the South. This means that a significant number of lawmakers from both parties have made it their duty to protect domestic sugar...

Then there are the anti-CAFTA labor forces. They continue to claim generally that reducing trade barriers is bad for the economy. This case is even harder to make than when the debate was over NAFTA, not CAFTA. More than a decade after the North American Free Trade Agreement, U.S. unemployment is just above 5 percent...

Plenty of people talk about helping poor countries. But for most of those people that means more foreign aid to keep the poor on our leash instead of helping them to develop and prosper on their own. When we shut out exports, we not only raise the cost of living for Americans and imply that America cannot compete on the world stage, but we also make no friends among those who seek to trade with us.

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