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The decision pitted NCTO's 75 members against other textile groups, deepening the CAFTA divide. On Tuesday, leaders for some North Carolina textile companies were in Charlotte to protest a visit by Honduran President Ricardo Maduro, who is lobbying for CAFTA. They say the deal will help companies move jobs abroad.

I.M. "Mac" Destler, a University of Maryland professor and foreign trade expert, predicts that CAFTA will probably result in some North Carolina job losses as companies shift more work to Central American countries with lower labor costs. But with CAFTA in place, factories in Central America and the Dominican Republic will be required to use U.S. textiles and fibers. That will give some North Carolina textile manufacturers an edge against China, he said.

Because the CAFTA region is so much smaller than Mexico and Canada, the impact should be less than that of NAFTA, he said.

"Trade may grow, but we're still talking about a fraction of our Mexico trade," Destler said.

For individual North Carolina companies, however, the market is big enough to draw appeal. Carolina Turkeys in Mount Olive employs 2,400 workers, who process more than 550 million pounds of turkey each year. Much of that gets snubbed by the American market, which prefers white meat. So Joel Coleman, Carolina Turkeys' director of export sales, is always looking for new outlets.

Some of the meat goes to Costa Rica, but with the current 40 percent tariff, the profit is thin. Less than 5 percent of Carolina Turkeys' exports go to Central America today. "What CAFTA would allow us to do is to sell turkey as a commodity product that their economy could afford," Coleman said. "Those countries also have resort areas where we could be selling our white meat. The whole region could become important to us."

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