Charles Rangel: “First of all, when we talk about the Caribbean Basin parity bill, the word ``parity'' means that we already had an…”

“First of all, when we talk about the Caribbean Basin parity bill, the word ``parity'' means that we already had an agreement with these countries in the Caribbean. We already reached out to our neighbors in the area and said that we are living now in a decade where we do not want to talk about just aid. We want to talk about commerce. We want to talk about trade. We want to talk about support for democracies. So when we went into an agreement with the North American Free Trade Agreement, what happened was that they got an edge on these little countries in the Caribbean and the President and the Congress said, hey, we promised to give them parity. So we are not talking about something new. We are talking about something we have been waiting for for years and that is to bring some equity in our relationship and our trade agreements with these countries in the Caribbean so that they would not be adversely affected by NAFTA.”