Sam Farr: “And the poor staying poor. Now, Latin America, I was in Honduras and Nicaragua, and I have to say from the government…”

“And the poor staying poor. Now, Latin America, I was in Honduras and Nicaragua, and I have to say from the government officials that you talk to, they are all excited about CAFTA. There are some that are worried about losing their identity, some politicians in Costa Rica, the most successful of these countries, that are very, very concerned that the CAFTA agreement is going to have this dominant United States, just sort of the big, huge 800-pound gorilla move into these countries and wipe out their local identity, wipe out their local culture and customs and essentially homogenize the whole thing with American fast-food chains and American businesses. So where I am concerned about this is that I think if we want to have a win-win, I mean, frankly, the Central American markets, these are small countries. These are poor countries. There is not a huge market down there. This is not going to put a big blip on America's foreign trade. This is not like trading with China or trading with Europe. These are some of the smallest countries in the entire; well, they are the smallest countries in the entire hemisphere. And the importance of these countries in a trade agreement for us as sellers is not that big. For us, as a country that is looking to stabilize the hemisphere, it is about infrastructure development. If you want to generate drug trade, keep a country poor.…”