Taking Note
FR
Clinton's First Year: Trade Above All No sooner had Colombia's president, C6sar Gaviria, been propelled to the secretary generalship of the Organization of American States (OAS) by what...
...U.S...
...North American and Australian companies," writes Brooke, "complain of increasing 'barbed wire' at home: environmental hearings and native-Indian land ownership disputes that either block new projects outright or stretch out approval time for years on end...
...Free trade, in other words, is a way to allow U.S.-based transnational companies to do business in countries desperate for their investment dollars, before unions, environmentalists, and land-rights claimants catch up with them...
...f course, some people are more primed to reach out than others...
...The new codes establish clear tax rules, easy repatriation of profits, protection against nationalization and low tariffs on machinery...
...Exports," says Richard Feinberg, director of Inter-American Affairs at the National Security Council, "have become a major engine of our economic growth, and Latin America is one of our most dynamic markets...
...Environmental degradation, the sell-off of the national wealth, and the development of an economic model driven by cheap-labor export platforms for transnationals are all at issue here in the "enlargement" of U.S.-based capital...
...policy toward Mexico, for example, where free trade and free elections have not yet shown themselves to be perfectly compatible, clearly demonstrates the primacy of trade...
...The simultaneous-though uneven-promotion of trade and electoral democracy comes together in a policy National Security Advisor Anthony Lake has called "enlargement...
...support for these ventures stems, of course, from an interest in a certain kind of hemispheric prosperity...
...Moreover, the magnet for investment is precisely the low costs of production made possible by the desperate straits most of the population finds itself in...
...Apparently the United States itself is less accommodating to these transnational companies-many of which are U.S.-based...
...One of the latest groups to take advantage of the policy of enlargement is the international community of mining companies which-following the U.S.-encouraged enactment of freemarket legislation in a growing number of the region's countries-has entered the Andes en masse, looking for copper, silver and gold...
...If there was some mystery as to why Washington exerted such inordinate pressure on regional countries to support Gaviria-the president of a country whose human-rights credentials are deeply suspect-over Costa Rican foreign minister Bernd Niehaus, Gaviria's post-election remarks may hold the key...
...The Administration has three stated goals for the Americas: free trade, free elections, and the amelioration of poverty...
...The World Bank has estimated that about 40% of global trade is intrafirm trade among the 350 largest transnationals, so that the "hemispheric prosperity" necessary to sustain that trade need not be all that deep...
...exports to Latin America have more than doubled in seven years to nearly $80 billion in 1993...
...These can probably be taken at face value, as long as we remember that free trade is primus inter pares...
...In the wake of Mexico's current political uncertainty, Clinton has publicly supported President Carlos Salinas' pronouncements that both political stability and the implementation of free-market economic policy must precede the democratization of the country...
...Lake has called for the replacement of the old policy of the "containment" of Communism with a policy of "enlargement...of the world's free community of market democracies," all of whom can take advantage of that "immense entrepreneurial opportunity" that's out there, almost within their grasp...
...The idea is to make the Americas into one vast land of opportunity where, in the famous words of Al Capone, "all you have to do is reach out and take it...
...We want the different trade agreements...to converge into one single process," he said...
...the other two are only relevant as long as they support the first...
...It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the promotion of free trade seems often to work at cross-purposes with the Administration's other professed goals for the Americas: democracy and the alleviation of poverty...
...Clinton's First Year: Trade Above All No sooner had Colombia's president, C6sar Gaviria, been propelled to the secretary generalship of the Organization of American States (OAS) by what the Council on Hemispheric Affairs has called "Washington's graceless back-room bullying and salon cajolery," than he announced that hemispheric free trade would become the organization's primary goal...
...The Clinton Administration may be indecisive about all other aspects of inter-American policy, but when it comes to letting the market-and those who have market power-take control of hemispheric economies, it has shown the ability to be expeditious...
...Discarding decades of prickly nationalism," reports James Brooke in the New York Times, "Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru have rewritten their mining codes to encourage foreign investment...
...We want to create a single, larger free-trade zone...
Vol. 27 • May 1994 • No. 6
