Clinton's Mantra Neutered South Of The Border

Eric Ellis, Abilene, Kansas

04/15/1998

A HEALTH food store cum bookshop and espresso bar - just about every town in Middle America has one.

Less frequent but no less American than the ubiquitous McDonald's, in places like Omaha, Nebraska or Abilene, Kansas, they are often outposts where the community's resident "intellectuals" gather, gossip and exchange views and ideas that somehow trickle down to the good ole boys in their pick-up trucks.

And as Bill Clinton rehearses his free trade mantra for next week's 34-nation Summit of the Americas in Santiago, Chile, he might wish to note the transformation taking place on the bookshelves of meeting places like these in small-town America. Beside the books on holistic medicine and happy herb growing are newer tomes that warn of The Danger to The American Way of Life of outsourcing, downsizing and foreign imports, of cheap labour, NAFTA and free trade. The message might sound like cranky Perot but the audience is rational Clinton.

It helps explain why the leader of the world's biggest economy goes to Chile with something less than a mandate to add more grease to a wheel he began lubricating soon after taking over from the equally supportive George Bush.

Thanks to a hostile Republican Congress, a neutered Clinton lacks the crucial fast-track trade negotiating authority he wants to turn the Americas into the world's biggest free trade zone just five years into the new millennium.

Indeed, so convinced were the Clinton camp that they wouldn't get the fast-track bill up, they withdrew it soon after so as not to suffer the ignominy of a very public defeat.

For the White House, it's a far cry from the hoopla and rhetoric of largely Latino and very symbolic Miami four years ago at the first summit where the goal of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) first hove into view.

A year later, Mexico's currency collapsed and in Middle America, where the votes are, Mexicans became not just the ones who cooked burgers and washed cars, they ate tax dollars as well. NAFTA is still a dirty word in many parts of the US, where jobs have been lost and not yet replaced by the high- tech revolution sweeping other parts of the country.

A scene in the latest film of populist documentary-maker Michael Moore, The Big One, has him donating a "celebratory" cheque for 85cents to the personnel manager of a rust belt company that shifted its production line south of the border. The 85cents was to represent the first hour's wages they would pay a Mexican worker.

That got some wry laughs in the cinema but few remember that Mexico paid back its debts in super-quick time. Still, it wasn't quick enough before the last congressional election.

The US will be anxious in Santiago to try to arrest any perception that the booming US is not interested in the region - just 5 per cent of its exports go south of Mexico - and particularly as democracy gathers strength throughout the continent. Clinton continually stressed that message in last year's high-profile visits to Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela and will use a two-day official visit to Chile before the summit gets under way to reinforce the line.

An unexpected bonus for the US has been the Latinos' apparent enthusiasm for such a zone, something that Argentinian President Carlos Menem made clear on his recent visit to Australia. Perhaps taking a page from their European forebears' textbook, Latin countries are making solid progress on their own.

There's even talk of a single currency, first for Mercosur - the strongest regional grouping linking Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and associate Chile - and then extending north to the Andes.

Last week the Andean Community - linking traditional enemies Peru and Ecuador with Bolivia, Venezuela and Colombia - announced they would be moving anyway to a free trade zone of sorts early in the new century, propelled by vaulting rises in intra-regional trade.

And even Caricom, the 15-nation Caribbean bloc, is anxious to pull itself up alongside the NAFTA protocols.

Mindful of the EU's post-Maastricht battle to get its members to converge their economies before next year's monetary union, this is remarkable talk in a region that only a few years ago was battling inflation measured in the hundreds and thousands of per cent.

For the US, more than just free trade is at stake. The expanding European Union, led by Spain, recently overtook the US in commercial importance in Latin America.

Spain's banks and European utilities and telco companies look poised to monopolise the wave of privatisations scheduled to wash across Latin America.

With no-one knowing how long Asia will be swathed in mothballs, the White House wants to firm up this huge and still thriving market in its backyard -before Brussels does.