We in the Caribbean know well that actions taken by the global superpower, located in our hemisphere, can have an almost immediate impact on the ways in which our economies function and our diplomacy operates. Increasingly many of our economies are linked to the US economy, whether in the spheres of tourism, oil and gas exports or bauxite and alumina exports. Indeed, at the beginning of this decade, one of the more liberal think-tanks in the United States proffered the view that for all practical purposes, “the Caribbean is part of North America,” with the advice that we should follow the example of Mexico and join NAFTA.
As we saw in our editorial on the subject of the George Bush legacy last Wednesday, the President inherited the issue of obtaining at least NAFTA-parity for the Caribbean Basin Initiative economies, including our own, from President Clinton. The American Congress had proven recalcitrant, and Clinton eventually concluded that he had spent enough of his political capital on this matter and left the task unfinished. We can therefore say that from Caricom’s perspective, Mr Bush started off on a relatively good footing by getting the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act (which established the CBI) transformed into Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act (CBTPA), by the Congress, thus getting us NAFTA-parity.
But then a sea-change in American foreign policy occurred, with the invasion of Iraq, an act which did not obtain the support of most of the countries of the hemisphere, including the Caribbean. In our area only the Dominican Republic overtly supported the initiative. That country had been anxious to curry favour with the United States for adherence to a free trade area agreement which President Bush had offered to the Central American countries. The DR went as far as to offer 100 troops for the mission in Iraq.
The President’s acquiescence to the DR’s request, and the acceptance of that country in what became the US-DR-CAFTA agreement, occurred at a time when Caricom and the DR, as members of the Cariforum, were preparing to negotiate an Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union. That EPA is now agreed, including the DR. But it is thought by some analysts that the US-DR-CAFTA agreement has set something of a template for any request for a free trade area agreement that might be made by Caricom. And in any case, it is also now felt that in terms of trade with the US, the Dominican Republic now has an access advantage over us.
Today Caricom is preparing to seek an extension of the CBTPA, in the light of the fact that President Bush, having secured a series of FTAs with a number of countries including Chile in the hemisphere, is now finding himself in the same situation as President Clinton towards the end of his presidency. The Congress is once again resisting passage of new FTAs, particularly, those now under consideration relating to Colombia and Panama.
In effect, the atmosphere against US opening of its market has further hardened in the Congress, with increasing popular sensitivity to what is deemed to be the taking away of ‘American jobs’ by other countries, in the context of the liberalized economic regime established by the World Trade Organisation agreement. Though Mr Bush opposed Congressional resistance, his legacy as his administration winds down, is a situation in which both of the Democratic party presidential contenders have declared themselves in favour of renegotiation of NAFTA with no detailed indication so far of what that may mean. The Republican nominee, Mr McCain, supports further liberalization initiatives, but as of now, it is felt that the odds for the presidency favour the Democrats. And in any case, it is also widely felt that the Democrats are likely to win a majority of seats in the Congress, continuing trends set in the mid-term Congressional elections.
In that setting, Caricom states have commenced a certain amount of lobbying in the Congress, particularly seeking to influence the black Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Charles Rangel. Rangel was the object of particular interest for our heads of government during their collective visit to Washington in June last year, and indeed he was invited to the June Caricom Heads of Government Conference, for some more ‘sweetening.’ Caricom heads are aware that Rangel played an important part in supporting the DR’s successful efforts to be joined to the FTA offer made to the Central Americans, though it has been said that the price of this was agreement by senior DR politicians to help certain Democratic candidates win the allegiance of the Dominican Republic diaspora in New York in the Congressional elections.
We might note in passing, then, a certain political flexibility on the part of the DR in dealing with the US in order to achieve its objectives. Would Caricom states want to be so adaptable?
Which question takes us on to another sphere of relations. Such Caricom goodwill as President Bush will have had when he initially assumed office, subsequently waned as a consequence of the events leading up to the exile from office, for a second time, of President Aristide of Haiti. Caricom governments did not really hide their feelings that the United States had been instrumental in obtaining the exit of Aristide in a manner which they opposed.
There had, indeed, been a precursor to this event, and the discomfort in US-Caribbean relations which ensued. At a meeting held in Nassau, Bahamas between Caricom foreign ministers and General Powell, then President Bush’s Secretary of State, ministers expressed their displeasure with what was felt to be American resistance to the release of World Bank aid to the administration of President Aristide. Then towards the end of Bush’s first four-year term, relations were not made better by a number of other events: the deportation of Caricom nationals with criminal records to their home countries and the threat of sanctions to countries which did not accept them on arrival; pressure on certain countries not to ratify the International Criminal Court Treaty which Caricom had been in the forefront of proposing; a persistent Caricom insistence that room should be made for Cuba in any Free Trade of the Americas that was negotiated.
With the FTAA negotiations in abeyance, Caricom has, as we have seen, turned its mind to securing an extension of the CBTPA, and a revision of the Caribcan Agreement with Canada. The political evolution of the Cuban regime opens up the medium-term possibility of a less rigid attitude by the US to relations with Cuba, irrespective of campaign noises now being heard. Senator Obama has been the most flexible in this regard. But it is well to bear in mind that, in spite of negative sounds on the Republican side, and even from Senator Clinton, it is under President Bush’s watch that there has been, in spite of the embargo strengthened by President Clinton, a steady expansion of US-Cuba trade particularly in the sphere of agricultural commodities and equipment.
All parties in the US now recognize that there is a certain evolution of thinking within the Cuban diaspora in the country, and even a degree of resistance to the last legislative measures introduced by President Bush which inhibited travel and the transfer of funds.
American initiatives by President Clinton in the case of the Shiprider Agreement, and then by President Bush in the case of the removal of Aristide, both had the effect of splitting the diplomatic harmony of Caricom. In the second case, it was undoubtedly felt by some Caricom leaders, especially Jamaica a near-neighbour of Haiti, that more deference should have been given to Caricom opinion.
But that latter event made clear two things of significance for the future. The first was the importance of continually bearing in mind that, as always, domestic considerations play an important part in United States diplomatic decision-making. The policies of both Presidents Clinton and Bush vis-à-vis Haiti were heavily influenced by the spectre of migration of Haitians to the key swing state of Florida.
This will continue to be so, not only in respect of Haiti and Florida, but on the critical question of international trade negotiations. In the latter case this American posture will be exacerbated in the future by increasing hostility among US voters to liberalization, now seen as an agent of the loss of employment. Our diplomacy will, in that regard require a certain subtlety, flexibility and persistence, especially as we are virtually coming in the tail of finalising negotiations by the US with the countries of the hemisphere, bar Brazil.
The second factor worthy of note is the extent to which an issue thought to be within the purview of Caricom, and on which it deemed it should have a significant hearing and influence – the issue of Haiti – was, in effect pulled from our diplomatic hands and placed in a wider setting. In this setting, significant states of the hemisphere, Brazil, Chile, Canada, seized the initiative in cooperating and, de facto, supporting the US policy towards Haiti, leaving Caricom – a split Caricom – isolated.
This event has some important lessons for us in respect of the influences now bearing on Caricom diplomacy in relation to what we deem to be our arena of integration. It indicates that we need to begin to see our region in a more hemispheric context than we have done. And this, coupled with the effect on us of Brazil-US trade negotiations (including the continuing WTO negotiations), should make us think of how we proceed as a new round of American presidential rule begins, and as the US itself has to pay deference, more than it did in the past, to new countries with new negotiating strengths in our hemisphere.
