For too long, debates over international trade have been dominated by corporate elites and economic ideologues, rather than rooted in the experiences of ordinary Americans.
The Trade Stories Project allows people who have been affected by policies and institutions like NAFTA and the WTO to share their views on a matter crucial to the global economy.
This includes displaced workers, farmers, small business owners and immigrants who have been typically excluded from the trade debate.
Francisco Orellana
Carasque, El Salvador
Francisco is a small farmer from the mountains of El Salvador. Over the years he has seen the effects of free trade on his village and country, including people migrating to the United States as the economic policies devastate their rural economies. By lowering trade barriers and tariffs, CAFTA forces subsistence farmers like Francisco to compete in their local marketplace with the subsidized products of American agribusiness.
Hear part of Francisco's story...
“In terms of the free trade agreement, that affects all of us a lot. It brings a lot of things that aren’t good for us. Because the price of fertilizer has gone way up, insecticides have gone way up, seeds and all of that are too expensive. Fertilizer last year was $40, now it’s at $80 or $90, it’s doubled. And how do your harvests turn out? They turn out really, really low if you want to sell it. And you’ve invested a ton of money, and you always end up screwed.
“The ones who are going to push the free trade agreements are the big companies. When you’re poor, you can’t plant that large quantity that they can. And they’re going to invade El Salvador, and not just El Salvador, but other countries, too, with the products that they bring from there. They’re going to bring it in cheaper, and the little that we grow isn’t going to be worth anything, because people are going to buy what’s cheaper. Us poor people, all we’re going to do is watch. We’ll just see it from afar… but it won’t benefit us.
“After the free trade agreement, there was a lot of migration. Because a lot of people say, ‘Well, here we don’t have a place to live, a place to work. We have to go.’ And there will be more.”