ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 18, 1997 TAG: 9704180061
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-16 EDITION: METRO
While the rest of the world makes free-trade progress, the United States is forfeiting its leadership role.
REMEMBER free trade?
When the North American Free Trade Agreement was passed in 1993, it was supposed to be a harbinger of more to come. Next to join the United States, Canada and Mexico in the alliance was to be Chile.
Well, it's 1997, and NAFTA has not expanded. While some steps have been taken in recent months with global agreements in information technology and telecommunications, free trade on the whole has made little progress in the past couple of years.
In the United States, that is.
Elsewhere, the free-trade movement continues to advance, without American leadership.
Chile, shut out so far from NAFTA, has signed a separate free-trade agreement with Canada and is expanding its existing agreement with Mexico.
At least potentially, even more important may be Chile's association with Mercosur, the emerging South American trade bloc of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. Not only are Mercosur countries building trade ties among themselves, but they are also whetting the interest of Western Europe.
Meanwhile, the United States snoozes. Apparently for reasons of partisan calculation, after the divisive debates a few years ago over NAFTA and GATT, neither the Clinton administration nor the Republican Congress shows much interest in making free trade a priority.
International trade now accounts for 23 percent of the U.S. economy, up from just 9 percent in 1960. Economic globalization is a fact of life. For America to forfeit its free-trade leadership is utterly foolish. Yet that is what's happening.
LENGTH: Short : 39 linesby CNB