Posted on 09/04/2002 1:55:14 PM PDT by madeinchina
Now that President Bush has won blank-check fast track trade authority, largely to negotiate a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, he's providing a preview of his negotiating strategy. Domestic businesses and their workers should brace for a big hit. Despite its endless propaganda about Latin America's promising export markets, the administration's real intent seems to be giving the region unreciprocated access to the U.S. market. Exhibit Number One is Argentina.
On August 28, the President announced that, rather than give Argentina another financial bailout, the United States would grant an immediate $126 million in trade benefits to that destitute country. That's peanuts compared with Argentina's $130 billion external debt, but more trade relief is certain once the two countries resolve an intellectual property dispute.
And the record signals that one-way free trade won't stop with Argentina. After all, the administration has already extended and broadened the unilateral Andean Pact (made necessary by the extension of the equally unilateral Caribbean Basin agreement of 2000) and most of the countries belonging to the FTAA area are nearly as broke as Argentina. Will Washington really reject their equally compelling cases for new trade breaks? And what of Turkey, the Philippines, and all the other third world producers that need to be vaccinated against the appeal of global terrorism?
At the same time, with U.S. growth still sluggish and imports still flooding in from all over the world thanks largely to existing lopsided trade agreements, every new concession for one country will undercut many others. Meanwhile, U.S. producers will be hard-pressed to hold on to domestic existing market share, much less penetrate new foreign markets.
The media has lambasted deceit and fraud on Wall Street in recent months. But that's not the only credibility gap currently sandbagging the U.S. economy.
(Source: "Bush approves trade benefits for Argentina," by Adam Entous, Reuters, August 28, 2002)
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