Our governments have hastened to congratulate President-elect Obama on his victory. They all recognize that that there is unfinished business with the Caribbean Community states, in the sense of things begun and not completed under the Bush presidency. In that period, as we have previously noted, the Caribbean obtained the long-awaited extension of the CBI, and Caricom has since been in the process of preparing for a successor arrangement. Governments are aware that in recent times the US has preferred full regional or bilateral free trade agreements, and has proceeded in this way with our Central American neighbours in default of the hemispheric Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) which President Clinton had sought.
We are left to surmise why, at the time when it took a FTA initiative towards the Central American states, the present American administration did not indicate any urgent desire for an FTA with Caricom, even bearing in mind that the President had already exerted himself in respect of the CBI extension, the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Agreement (CBTPA). Our Cariforum partner, the Dominican Republic, did not of course wait to be asked. As we have observed previously, they initiated diplomacy towards the US to ensure parity with their Hispanic Central American neighbours, to which President Bush responded with alacrity.
It may be that in our case, there was a perception of an insufficient Caricom commitment as yet to go the whole hog of an FTA. We might speculate that in their eyes we had really only been half-hearted in proceeding with the FTAA discussions, raising issues that were not particularly palatable to them: on special and differential treatment for small economies, and on the inclusion of Cuba as a means of ensuring the economic integrity of the hemisphere and the Caribbean sub-region as a whole. It was well known, of course that the Bush administration was inclined to harden embargo measures against that country, rather than ameliorate them (a report prepared by the perceived moderate Colin Powell showed no inclination to concessions to Cuba). And we can note that at that time, not even our generally sympathetic neighbour, Canada, a major investor in the Canadian economy, was willing to irritate the American President by conceding to our entreaties to invite Cuba to the Summit of the Americas which it was hosting.
In the present context, specific Caricom countries have their particular objectives, many of which amount to ensuring that a reasonable degree of parity of access to American markets is maintained in respect of various products. And at the multilateral level, the government of Trinidad & Tobago is anxious to ensure that there is a productive outcome to the Summit of the Americas meeting to be held there, particularly in the face of much criticism of its initiative to hold the meeting there at a time of a possibility of future financial constraint. The circumstances have changed since Trinidad first sought the summit when there was still some optimism of a successful negotiation of the FTAA, and the country was anxious to be chosen as the host of the FTAA Secretariat.
Trinidad & Tobago had, of course a material, as well as a symbolic, interest in its pursuit of that endeavour. The government has long asserted that, given its location and its possession of the critical energy resource of natural gas, choice of the country for the summit would provide a significant filip to its longer term objective of transforming it into the site of a substantial industrial manufacturing location directed at the US market and beyond, and into a major international financial centre – the, in effect, Singapore of the region cum hemisphere, and in part competing with Panama nearer home. But the hovering threat of a major recession in which the US itself is threatened, makes optimism on that score less than might have been previously possible.
While other Caricom countries would undoubtedly continue to support Trinidad, they are hardly likely to see this objective as germane to their own short-term objectives. In terms of their desire for a short, and then longer term free trade agreement – an enhanced CBI/CBTPA as really a prelude to some kind of full FTA at the political convenience of the new administration − they would not be, we suspect, particularly persuaded of Trinidad’s objective as significantly beneficial to make it a priority regional initiative of their own. And in the present climate of a depressed global economy and the pressure on the new American President to place his priorities on achieving a corrective to the global economic scene, it may well be that, in terms of developing countries he might well prefer to choose another medium-term objective. This would involve seeking to deal with major emerging powers like Brazil towards an objective of not only reducing or removing the threat of a long recession, but in doing so in a context in which the United States can come to some understandings with Brazil, India and China on breaking the logjam on global free trade talks.
During the President’s tenure at the Summit of the Americas, Caricom heads will undoubtedly hope to have some degree of special attention from him. Prime Minister Manning has already spoken of the preparation of a package of proposals on Caricom objectives. But what perceptions will the President come with? Will he have been briefed on the arrangements which we have recently made with the European Union in the Economic Partnership Agreement? Will he be advised that this should, once it is in concordance with basic US free trade agreement orientations, be used as a template – in the sense of a minimum standard – for our FTA arrangement, or next trade agreement, with the US?
Will the Caricom heads think it prudent, or even mandatory, that they raise the issue of Cuba’s medium term participation in the economic arrangements of the hemisphere? Do they, at this point feel that they need the ‘permission’ of the US to seek to advance a further integration of Cuba in a wider than Caricom context?
Will our heads also think it necessary to engage in some preliminary discussions with the Government of Brazil on the wider question of the effect of its own free trade/removal of subsidies initiatives of that country in the context of its success at the WTO, and Guyana’s fear of deleterious effects on its sugar industry? Which leads to two other questions of medium term dimensions, if we put future relations with the United States itself in a context of future hemispheric relations; first, the extent to which a diplomatic demarche towards detailed discussion on a future pattern of Caricom Single Economy development directed towards developing a second tier alliance with countries like Brazil, Venezuela and others would be useful in shaping our development, and therefore trade, strategy; and secondly, whether a more substantial effort (hopefully now in train with the Task Force recently set up by the Caricom Secretariat) at harmonizing strategies in external economic relations with the Dominican Republic might engage American attention in respect of our desired focus towards a US-Caricom FTA. We are, it might be noted, already now forced for the future, to rationalize our relations with the DR in the context of future Cariforum relations with the EU. Realistically, the EU no longer sees Caricom; it sees Cariforum.
In other words, can we begin to see our relations with the United States not so much in terms of what major initiative new President Obama can do for us in the near future. Rather our focus might be in terms of whether we need to work towards evolving a more concrete set of relationships in the hemisphere as a whole, which can provide a more substantial stepping stone to achieving a new trade and economic relationship that is not so decisively dependent on the twists and turns of American electoral politics.
