US-AMERICAS: Clinton’s “Trap Trip” South

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, May 4 1997 (IPS) - President Bill Clinton’s first official trip south of the border this coming week may not be as pleasant as planned by the White House, because of Washington’s tough measures on trade, drugs, and immigration.

Clinton will fly to Mexico Monday, then on to Costa Rica and Barbados on what admintration officials term a “goodwill journey” – the first in a series that will culminate in the next Summit of the Americas in Santiago, Chile in March 1998.

At each stop, Clinton will stress his hopes for forging a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by the year 2005 and for building a “partnership based on mutual respect and mutual trust” with other democratic countries in the region, according to national security adviser, Sandy Berger.

While The U.S. President no doubt will receive a warm public reception by the dozen or so leaders he will be meeting, political obervers believe that private talks may be more heated.

“This is a very awkward time for Clinton to go to the region,” notes Steve Hellinger, co-director of the Development Group for Alternative Policies (DGAP), a policy group here. “A lot of people are angry about what is happening to their economies and see the U.S. as responsible.”

In addition, the fact that Clinton has not yet even submitted a request to Congress for “fast-track authority” to negotiate new trade agreements in the hemisphere will not aid his credibility, says Hellinger.

Clinton’s most sensitive port of call will be Mexico where ties have become strained over new U.S. immigration laws that make it easier to deport undocumented Mexicans and efforts by Congress to declare Mexico “uncooperative” in the war on drugs.

Mexicans will deeply resent any demands by Clinton that Mexico do more to fight drug-trafficking or illegal immigration, according to Adolfo Aguilar, an independent member of Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies. “We are really offended by these recent measures,” he says, adding that Washington is seen increasingly in Mexico as engaged in “bully unilateralism.”

In addition, the failure of Mexico’s recent economic recovery to trickle down to the vast majority of the country’s citizens devastated by the 1994-95 peso collapse has helped sour the mood over the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The fact that Mexico is also engaged at the moment in a major electoral campaign makes Clinton’s trip a “no-win situation,” according to Aguilar. Although he is due to meet the leaders of the two major opposition parties as well as President Ernesto Zedillo of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), he will have to walk a very fine line to avoid being seen as taking sides.

Aguilar labelled Clinton’s visit as a “trap trip.”

“If it looks like he’s supporting Zedillo and the PRI, many people will be very angry,” says Aguilar. “If it looks like he isn’t supporting them, it could have a devastating impact on the PRI. Either way, it will look like he is interfering in Mexico’s internal affairs, which will offend everyone.”

In Costa Rica, where he will meet Central American presidents, Clinton is expected to celebrate the end of civil wars in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador and progress in building democratic institutions. With his drug czar, ret. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, at his side, the U.S. president will also press them to do more to disrupt drug trafficking on the isthmus.

The Central American leaders, however, have their own priorities to press upon Clinton, starting with the same immigration law which has upset Mexico. More than half a million Central Americans living in the United States are now vulnerable to deportation to countries which are still struggling to recover from civil wars and protracted economic recessions.

These immigrants send billions of dollars a year to their families back home. Remittances to El Salvador, for example, topped 1.25 billion dollars last year – more than the combined revenues of all the country’s exports.

With aid flows to the region a tiny fraction of what they were ten years ago, Central American economies have been forced to embrace export industries which, until NAFTA was enacted, were given preferential treatment by the huge U.S. market through the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI).

But NAFTA has made Mexico a much more attractive place for export and assembly industries to invest, and Clinton has so far been unable to get Congress to enact a law that would give CBI countries parity with NAFTA. “We can’t really compete,” say Caribbean Basin economic sources.

Clinton can be expected to get an earful on yet another trade matter from Caribbean leaders in Barbados, who will also have complaints about NAFTA’s impact on their economies.

Washington’s recent victory at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which ruled that European Union (EU) trade preferences for Caribbean bananas violated global trade rules, came as a major shock to Caribbean nations, especially the tiny Eastern Caribbean states some of which rely on bananas for as much as 70 and 80 of their total export revenue.

“Bananas will definitely be discussed at the summit,” says Jamaican Amb. Richard Bernal and Clinton’s Special Envoy to the Americas, Mack McLarty, has already said a the problem will be resolved in Bridgetown. He suggested last week that this might mean Washington agreeing not to press for the elimination of the EU’s tariff scheme at this time.

Drugs will be another major topic of conversation in Barbados as the U.S. administration says Colombian traffickers have moved much of their smuggling and money-laundering operations into the region.

The United States has negotiated accords with most of the states giving it the right to unilaterally pursue and arrest suspected traffickers inside their national waters. But Barbados and Jamaica have so far resisted U.S. demands for similar agreements, insisting that Washington agree that local authorities be present when arrests are made.

“It’s nice of them to say they’ll do all of this at no cost to us, but it shows they don’t really respect us as independent nations,” notes one diplomat from the Caribbean.