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Welcome to USAGOLD's "Gilded
Opinion" pages.
We invite you to browse our index
of outstanding gold-based commentary.
(Back to Holger Jensen Index)
While we find Mr. Jensen's columns particularly informative with respect to foreign affairs, his opinions do not necessarily represent those of Centennial Precious Metals, USAGOLD, its management and clientele.
INSIDE FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Bush's promises to Latins
may be tough to deliver
by Holger Jensen, International Editor
Democrats accuse President Bush of going to Latin America simply to pander to Hispanic voters back home.
That's not entirely true.
Though a key Republican goal is to increase support among American Latinos, Bush also wants Latin Americans to feel less neglected by their giant northern neighbor. And he made some impressive promises on his four-day foray down south in terms of freer trade and more foreign aid.
However, his ability to deliver remains questionable. Here's how the rhetoric stacks up against reality:
TRADE -- When he arrived at the White House a year ago, Bush was the first U.S. president since John F. Kennedy to put Latin America at the top of his foreign-policy agenda. Underpinning this was his pledge to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas, a single market stretching from Alaska to Argentina, by 2005. But the region all but slipped off his radar screen after Sept. 11.
Seeking to reassure his Latin American hosts, Bush reaffirmed his commitment to free trade and an immigration accord that would give undocumented Mexicans guest worker status in the United States. But he conceded that "people cannot get rid of old habits" in Washington, implying that partisan politics had stalled his trade agenda.
The House of Representatives voted in December to give Bush authority to make global trade agreements. But it was a 215-214 squeaker, suggesting that Democrats were not the only ones opposed in the Republican-controlled House. The Democrat-controlled Senate has yet to act.
Renewal of the Andean Trade Preferences Act, which expired in December, also is stuck in the Senate because of objections from the U.S. textile lobby. ATPA covers about 4,000 products from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru -- nearly two-thirds of their legal exports -- as a means of weaning those nations off drug production.
Lastly, Bush has been attacked for slapping up to 30 percent tariffs on imported steel. Critics say it will do little to help the ailing but politically influential U.S. steel industry, while doing a lot to improve the chances of Rust Belt Republicans in upcoming congressional elections and Bush's own re-election prospects in 2004.
The move outraged U.S. trade partners and prompted Brazil, Japan, the European Union and Australia to file complaints with the World Trade Organization. The WTO has already sided with the EU in another case involving U.S. protectionism, ruling for the fourth time that tax breaks given to companies like Boeing and Microsoft constitute an illegal export subsidy.
Bush likes to give the impression that he's a free-trader while Congress is protectionist, but the verdict is still out.
FOREIGN AID -- For more than 30 years the United Nations has been pushing wealthy countries to give 0.7 percent of their gross national product in aid to poor countries. Only a handful have done so and the wealthiest among them, the United States and Japan, are at the bottom of the generosity meter with .O1 and .03, respectively. Our foreign-aid budget has declined to $10 billion a year while military spending has climbed to $379 billion.
At a U.N. development conference in Monterrey, Mexico, leaders of the poor nations warned the rich that if they want a world free of terrorism, they will have to pay for it, because poverty is "the breeding ground for violence and despair." Bush agreed that fighting poverty is as important as fighting terrorism "because hope is an answer to terror."
He then joined European leaders in promising substantially more aid if the recipients commit themselves to political, legal and economic reforms. "Pouring money into a failed status quo does little to help the poor," said Bush.
The American aid plan initially envisioned an extra $5 billion over three years beginning in 2003. But by the time Bush arrived in Mexico it was upgraded to $10 billion, beginning as early as this year. The European Union promised to add $20 billion through 2006.
Even so, both plans fall far short of the U.N. goal of doubling the world's foreign aid to $100 billion a year with the aim of halving the number of people living on less than $1 a day -- an estimated 1.2 billion people -- by 2015.
Congress, of course, will have to sign off on any foreign-aid commitments made by Bush. And Colombia's "war on terrorism" against drug-trafficking rebels is still likely to get more U.S. funding than the more peaceful, though equally poor, parts of Latin America.
March 26, 2002
Send your questions to international editor Holger Jensen, who will answer one each day. E-mail: hjens@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 The E.W. Scripps Co. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted by USAGOLD with permission of Mr. Jensen. No further reproduction without permission.
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