Condoleezza’s Message

Condoleezza Rice is on her first trip to Latin America as secretary of state and she is trying to stress a positive agenda. This is well and good, but Rice has also made it clear that Washington’s main issue with Latin America concerns trade. She wants to revive the moribund Free Trade Area of the Americas, the grand vision of creating a single trading bloc stretching from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. That dream will remain a fantasy. Even though free trade would help Latin America grow faster, attract more investment and build more sophisticated societies closely integrated with the emerging global civilization, politicians throughout the hemisphere will keep sabotaging progress. Rice called on Brazil to “reenergize” FTAA but the Bush administration has scarcely lifted a finger to push the far less challenging CAFTA trade pact with Central America through Congress. Business lobbies, labor unions and ignorant nationalists in the US and throughout Latin America have blocked full-blown trade integration at every turn. That’s the bad news. The less bad news is that a great many Latin American companies now realize that exports are an integral part of their business. Trade is flourishing even without any grand trade pacts. The great challenge for Latin America is to ensure that this positive outlook for trade, investment and growth will survive the Chinese-driven commodity cycle. It would be a tragedy if Latin America resigns itself to being no more than a supplier of base metals and low-value farm goods to China and the rest of the world.