Understanding United States Foreign Policy Toward Latin America: Lessons From A Comparison of Nafta and the Colombian Trade Promotion Agreement

Abstract

UNDERSTANDING UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY TOWARD LATIN AMERICA: LESSONS FROM A COMPARISON OF NAFTA AND THE COLOMBIAN TRADE PROMOTION AGREEMENT Margaret M. Commins Queens University of Charlotte Ongoing issues with violence and drug trafficking in both Mexico and Colombia invite frequent comparisons between the two countries (Bonnor, 2010; Fukuyama and Colby, 2011). Indeed the parallels are significant . Both Mexico and Colombia are marked by some of the highest per capita murder rates in the world, weak and ineffective judicial institutions , and large swaths of each country considered ungovernable. And, perhaps predictably, United States policy toward both countries is similar as well. Plan Colombia, the United States’ response to narco-trafficking and violence in Colombia, and the Merida Initiative, the United States’ response to Mexico’s drug wars, both emphasize military solutions to drug trafficking, combined with varying degrees of emphasis on state-building and socioeconomic development. In terms of United States policy toward Latin America, however, these countries share another commonality, one that is not as well-explored: the United States signed and implemented preferential trade agreements (PTAs) with each. President Carlos Salinas de Gortari of Mexico and President George H.W. Bush of the United States endorsed the notion of a bilateral free trade agreement between their countries in June of 1990. In September, 1990, Canada asked to be included in the negotiations, and the resulting “North American Free Trade Agreement” (NAFTA) was passed by the United States Congress in 1993, and implemented on January 1, 1994. The Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement (CTPA) was signed by President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia and President George W. Bush in November, 2006, passed by the United States Congress in October, 2011, and entered into force on May 15, 2012. Though passed by the United States Congress almost twenty years apart, these agreements are quite similar. Both are preferential trade agreements signed between a developed country, the United States, and a developing Latin American country (and, in the case of NAFTA, another developed country, Canada). Both were initiated and negotiated primarily by Republican administrations, but shepherded through the United States Congress by Democratic presidents. At least rhetorically, both were touted by these presidents as demonstrations of major shifts in United States policy toward Latin America. Both agreements were passed in times of C 2013 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 73 The Latin Americanist, December 2013 economic and fiscal difficulty for the United States. Both agreements were passed during periods of strain in the multilateral trading system. And, each agreement faced its most significant opposition not from business interests fearing import competition, but from citizen and labor groups worried about a variety of human rights issues, including the treatment of labor and potential environmental degradation. It is common to explain policymakers’ decisions to pursue trade agreements with reference to the demands of powerful economic interests that will benefit from an agreement’s provisions, particularly the opening of foreign markets and increased protection for foreign direct investment (see, for example, Milner, 1988; Rogowski, 1989; Hiscox, 2002). Though economic interests (capital and labor) that will be hurt by increased importcompetition will lobby against free trade agreements, if an agreement includes liberalization that will benefit a sufficiently broad and powerful coalition of economic interests, we can expect policymakers to pursue it. But, explaining U.S. support for NAFTA and CTPA in these terms is problematic. For one, explanations based on the preferences of interest groups are not always as compelling in the case of PTAs, particularly North-South trade agreements like NAFTA and CTPA. The potential economic benefits are usually much smaller. And, because opposition to these agreements is quite strong in the United States, particularly from non-economic interests like environmental and human rights groups, the interest group politics are more complex than those captured by analyses focusing on economic interests. Indeed, negotiating North-South PTAs is relatively costly for U.S. policymakers. These agreements cover a range of issues – from trade and investment to labor standards and environmental protection – and require significant time and attention to negotiate. And, unlike many foreign policy decisions taken by the United States government , trade agreements must be passed by both houses of the United...