Politics & Power Quote by Stephen F. Lynch

A trade deal sells itself with a simple promise: exports mean factories humming and paychecks growing at home. Lynch punctures that storyline by getting maddeningly specific about what, exactly, the U.S. is exporting to the six CAFTA countries. Not the made-in-America goods that show up on shelves and reliably translate into domestic employment, he suggests, but the kind of exports that barely touch local consumer life in the importing nations. The tell is his phrase "not consumed in the purchasing nations" - a careful, almost accountant-like way of hinting at a more controversial reality: re-export and supply-chain churn.

Read politically, this is an argument against the rosy headline numbers that accompany trade agreements. If a large share of exports are intermediate inputs, components, or goods routed through CAFTA for assembly and then shipped onward, the "export" statistic becomes a PR instrument more than a labor-market indicator. Lynch is signaling that the gains may be concentrated: logistics firms, multinational manufacturers, and capital owners benefit from a system optimized for throughput, while the average worker hears "exports" and expects new jobs that may never materialize.

The context matters: CAFTA was debated in the mid-2000s as a litmus test for pro-trade Democrats and labor-aligned skeptics. Lynch's line is aimed at breaking the spell of abstraction. He pulls the conversation from ideology ("free trade" versus "protectionism") to mechanics: who consumes, who captures value, and who gets left holding the slogan.