A MISADVENTURE

President's Grand Tour Of Latin America Wound Up Missing The Boat

Few have commented on President Bush's recent Latin American trip. Perhaps
that's because it accomplished little. Unfortunately, it is not accurate to
say that at least no harm was done.

A trip apparently designed to let Latin American leaders know the United
States is still thinking about them in the post-Sept. 11 world may have
left most Latin Americans believing that benign neglect would be preferable.

A year ago, at the Quebec Summit of the Americas the buzz was about the
development of a Free Trade Area of the Americas, which would not be a
panacea but would be the best long-term hope for relieving the grinding
poverty that afflicts so many Latin Americans.

But President Bush undercut any credibility he might have had on the issue
of free trade by announcing the imposition of unnecessary tariffs on
foreign steel a few days before his trip. The fact that the tariffs were
clearly motivated by domestic political considerations didn't help. If the
richest country in the world succumbs to special- interest politics on
trade issues, how can it expect poorer countries to pay attention when it
tells them to take the long view?

Brazil is the only Latin American country that makes significant quantities
of steel, but Brazil will be hurt by the tariffs and Brazilians know it.

So President Bush was not only unable to make progress toward freer trade,
but he also might have taken a few steps backward on the issue. And every
other issue he emphasized was essentially negative, for the United States
and for the long-term development of prosperity and freedom in Latin America.

In Mexico, he succumbed to the lure of equating help with foreign aid. But
as an increasing number of economists and policy analysts now understand,
poverty is seldom the result of insufficient help from abroad, but of bad
domestic policies that entrench political control over marketplaces and
peoples' lives. Foreign aid tends to create a cushion to keep bad rulers
and bad policies in place, and generally goes to the elites that are the
problem rather than to poor people who need help.

In Peru, the president restated his support for the failed drug war, which
did not win him points as a keen observer. The perception is widespread in
the Andean countries that the United States has failed to handle its
domestic drug problem, so it seeks to intervene and dictate policies in
source countries. The president reinforced that perception.

In Latin America this is widely - and often justifiably - viewed as pushing
the blame for U.S. domestic failures onto Latin America. The hint that the
United States will resume the unpopular policy of shoot- first for planes
suspected of smuggling drugs, which is tied to the killing of U.S.
Christian missionaries in Peru last year, was also not helpful.

The commitment of more military aid to the government of Colombia in its
civil war with guerrillas was also unfortunate and is likely to have a
negative impact in the near future. The previous policy pretended to be
about the war on drugs rather than intervention in domestic Colombian
politics. The announcement that the mission will be broadened to include
protection of oil pipelines and opposition to any guerrilla group defined
as terrorist is ill-advised at a time when limited U.S. resources might be
better focused on terrorists who pose an imminent threat to U.S. interests.

We don't expect people in the upper echelons of our government to
acknowledge that the war on drugs amounts to a huge subsidy to terrorists,
although it is unquestionably true. But even they might understand that
increasing U.S. involvement in Colombia could increase the likelihood of
attacks on Americans and American interests.

All sides in Colombia are unquestionably vicious, but up to now most have
refrained from direct attacks on Americans. That could change.

Finally, as trade analyst Ian Vasquez of the Cato Institute in Washington,
D.C., pointed after the president's trip, Bush punted a chance to generate
real good will. An Andean-U.S. tariff-cutting trade act expired in December
and has not been renewed. President Bush did extend it for 30 days, but he
has not pushed the issue in Congress and didn't emphasize it during his
trip. That failure did not go unnoticed.

All in all, President Bush just might have done better to stay at home.