IF LATIN AMERICA is our back yard, it's one President Clinton has never seen.
Until Monday, he had never been south of the border in an official capacity. And he will have more than bruised feelings to soothe on his weeklong trip to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.Although Clinton says he wants to be a "good neighbor," especially after a series of acrimonious disputes with Mexico, the regions he is visiting regard him as a disinterested one. And they are tired of being typecast as suppliers of drugs, illegal aliens or stealers of U.S. jobs.
The Mexicans are the most prickly.
They are still angry over Senate attempts to decertify Mexico as an ally in the drug war. Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo did, finally, abolish his country's corruption-plagued drug enforcement agency, but many of his countrymen resent the fact that he did so under pressure from Washington.
Mexico and most Central American nations whose economies are heavily dependent on remittances from emigres or guest workers in the United States are highly concerned about more restrictive U.S. immigration laws that could deprive them of this income. They also have mixed feelings about NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement that has created jobs for some and layoffs for others.
Mexico is a strong supporter of NAFTA despite unresolved arguments about cross-border trucking and other minor issues. In general, Central American nations want to join, but the Caribbean states echo American complaints that they are losing jobs, particularly in textiles, to Mexico.
There is no arguing the fact that since NAFTA was signed in 1994, the U.S. trade deficit has climbed to an eight-year high of $114.2 billion. Mexico accounted for a record $16.3 billion of this last year and Canada $22.8 billion, the highest in a decade.
In a February report, Ralph Nader's Public Citizen organization said NAFTA had become "the trade agreement from hell," costing 600,000 American jobs in three years. The Clinton administration says only 107,000 jobs were lost, more than offset by a gain in export-created jobs.
Regardless of who wins that argument, there are long-term benefits to expanding NAFTA. Our market being pretty well open, we can only gain from access to others. And the Europeans and Asians, whose leaders have already beaten Clinton to the punch in courting Latin America, will move in if we don't.
Officially, the White House remains committed to creating a hemis-pheric free-trade zone by 2005, a goal announced at the 1994 Summit of the Americas in Miami. But what Clinton called a "magic moment" dissipated with the collapse of the Mexican economy and the realization that some South American countries - Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile - are already doing more business with Europe than the United States.
Central American nations, whose leaders are due to meet with Clinton in Costa Rica on Thursday, complain they are getting far less American aid now that they are stable democracies.
By way of compensation, they want membership in NAFTA and a waiver of immigration laws that could lead to the deportation of 320,000 Central Americans employed in the United States.