Miami -- Trade and private capital flows
are important economic engines for the developing world
at a time when U.S. official development assistance to certain
nations is being reduced.
Jose Cardenas from the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) told USINFO that the “health
of the U.S. relationship” with the developing world,
particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, should
not be measured by aid alone. Rather, the relationship should
be viewed in the “totality” of the amount of
trade, investment and private flows of capital between the
United States and other countries, said Cardenas, who is
USAID’s deputy assistant administrator for Latin America
and the Caribbean.
Expanding on remarks he made at the December
3-5 Miami Conference on the Caribbean Basin, Cardenas said
his agency seeks to help its partners in the Latin American
region take advantage of the opportunities brought by free
trade, investment and the transfer of remittances by foreign
workers in the United States back to their home countries.
USAID continues its traditional work worldwide,
which includes boosting health care and education, and bolstering
the ability of nations to trade with global partners. But
the United States also wants to help foreign governments
take better advantage of the “demands, challenges
and the opportunities of a globalized international economy,”
Cardenas said.
The Bush administration is putting much
stock in U.S. free-trade pacts with the Americas, Cardenas
said. But if developing countries in the region are not
positioned to take advantage of those agreements, he said,
“then we’re really going to create a lot of
problems for ourselves.”
In his remarks at the conference December
4, Cardenas said growing trade and private investment are
“the future” of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Cardenas said the U.S. free-trade pact with
Central America and the Dominican Republic (CAFTA-DR) “affords
a tremendous opportunity to expand trade and investment”
throughout that region, as does a pending U.S. free-trade
agreement with Panama. The countries of the Caribbean also
are exploring opportunities for economic integration to
increase productivity, open new markets and compete more
effectively in the global economy, said Cardenas.
NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS PLAY KEY ROLE
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) play a key
role in filling the gap where U.S. official foreign assistance
ends.
Sam Worthington, president and chief executive
officer of InterAction, a coalition of nongovernmental organizations,
told USINFO November 28 that the key to an improved U.S.
image worldwide is that America not be seen as a “bully”
or “simply a military power.”
Worthington, whose Washington-based group
has a $5 billion relationship with USAID projects worldwide,
said the United States must show it has “deep respect”
for other cultures and is willing to partner with others
in increasing global security and well-being.
Worthington said InterAction’s member
organizations manage about $11 billion in resources to help
countries around the world, with $7 billion of that coming
from the American people directly through donations.
NGOs, said Worthington, are often the “only
face” of America in many places around the developing
world. He added that “our ability [to be in those
places] is enhanced and leveraged through our relationship
with USAID.”
POVERY DOMINANT ISSUE FACING LATIN AMERICA
The State Department’s Charles Shapiro
told USINFO at the Miami conference that poverty, social
inequality and exclusion are the dominant issues facing
Latin America and the Caribbean. The challenge for the United
States and its partners in the region is ensuring that citizens
there see the benefits of democracy and open economic markets,
said Shapiro, who is the department’s senior coordinator
for the Western Hemisphere free-trade agreement task force.
Shapiro said that despite what skeptics
have said, the Bush administration has been successful in
persuading the U.S. Congress that American free-trade pacts
with Latin America have brought “real benefits”
for the region.
“What we need to do is demonstrate
to our citizens that representative democracy and market-based
economies work and that they will deliver results to citizens”
in the Americas, said Shapiro.
Shapiro predicted that the U.S. Senate will
pass a pending free-trade agreement with Peru. That measure
already has been approved by the U.S. House of Representatives.
But a proposed U.S. free-trade trade pact with Colombia
faces more difficulty in Congress, he said, because of opponents’
concerns about violence against labor unions in that Andean
country and from others who are against all free-trade agreements.
Shapiro said the U.S.-Colombian free-trade
pact contains the “highest labor rights and environmental
standards of any trade agreement in the world.”
Eric Green
/ USINFO Staff Writer
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