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Latin American Connection
Going South?
Florida watches nervously as a neo-populist tide rolls through Latin America, the state's most important trade region
Indeed, left-leaning Latin American countries aren't the only ones playing the protectionist card. Brian C. Dean, the new executive director of Florida FTAA, points out that DR-CAFTA passed Congress by only two votes. "We have our own variant of populism and nativist tendencies that make trade agreements unpalatable to many in Washington who don't have the wholistic view you see in Florida's congressional delegation," says Dean. "I don't think it's just Hugo Chavez. We need to improve the political discourse in our own country so that people understand the benefit of open markets."
Case in point: The U.S. refusal to bend on agricultural tariffs, including some that help Florida farmers, was perhaps the greatest blow to a possible pact with Brazil. Gov. Bush and others are working to strengthen partnerships and trust with key countries to jump-start negotiations on the FTAA. Bush views his "15 by 15" ethanol initiative as a benefit to both the U.S. and Brazil, Florida's largest trading partner, which produces 4 billion gallons of ethanol a year. The initiative would set a U.S. consumption goal of 15 billion gallons of ethanol a year by 2015, tripling current use. To accomplish the goal, which would help the U.S. wean itself from oil, Bush wants the U.S. to negotiate a trade agreement on ethanol imports from Brazil. While oil comes in duty-free, the U.S. imposes a 54-cents-a-gallon tax on imported ethanol.
Free markets will withstand the neopopulists, predicts Ken Roberts, president of WorldCity. But future pacts like the ethanol plan are likely to happen one step at a time. "It was maybe presumptuous to think we could ever get (the original 34 FTAA nations) to agree," Roberts says. "But business marches on. Ultimately, businessmen are going to do business, and politicians are going to do politics."
Jim Bacchus, the former Florida congressman who served as chairman of the appellate body of the World Trade Organization, says critics are correct that free trade alone won't immediately or automatically raise the living standards of the poor. Rather than ignore or brush off the rise of anti-American, anti-business politicians, he says, Florida and U.S. leaders should pay increasing attention to the political winds in Latin America. "It's vitally important that trade be accompanied by the kind of economic initiatives that allow all people to benefit from trade."
