Average real wages in Mexican manufacturing are lower than they were 10 years ago, if you can believe that.

Free trade should not mean free labor.

The biggest share of U.S. exports to the six CAFTA nations is not the traditional job-creation kind. These are products that are not consumed in the purchasing nations.

Since NAFTA was put in place, Mexico has lost 1.9 million jobs and most Mexicans' real wages have fallen.

If you consider that a typical Central American consumer earns only a small fraction of an average American worker's wages, it becomes clear that CAFTA's true goal is not to the increase U.S. exports.

Instead of trade policy that is beneficial to American businesses and workers as well as our trade partners, we have a flawed trade policy that hurts all parties.

Proponents of the Central America Free Trade Agreement have conveniently ignored this fundamental fact: the effect of trade on incomes in Central America and how to alleviate the adverse consequences of trade liberalization on the poor.