14183: Craig-NYT Article: Haitian Industry Sees Hope in U.S. Trade Bill (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Dan Craig <dgcraig@att.net>

Haitian Industry Sees Hope in U.S. Trade Bill
December 23, 2002
By DAVID GONZALEZ

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - For each sewing machine that
remains idle at Dietrich Siegel's factory here, life grows
harder for at least five relatives who depended on the
person who made a living at it. As Mr. Siegel looked at
rows of dozens of silent machines on a recent day, he
lamented that he and his workers were losing not only
money, but also time.

"I won't ever be able to make up for having empty rows like
this," said Mr. Siegel, the vice president of Classic
Apparel, which in recent years has been forced to close one
factory and to sell another. "When time is gone, it's
lost."

Much time has been lost in Haiti. Its manufacturing base
has shrunk by half from its peak in the mid-1980's, down to
25,000 jobs, because of political instability.

Although Haiti's daunting social and economic problems have
earned it unwanted comparisons with Africa, the
manufacturers envy Africa in one important aspect: to try
to reverse the decline in jobs, Haiti's manufacturers are
lobbying the United States Congress to pass a trade act
that would grant Haiti duty exemptions held by sub-Saharan
nations since 2000.

The bill would allow Haitian clothing factories, which now
receive exemptions only if they use American fabric, to use
fabrics from other countries, where they might cost less. A
bill has been sponsored and supported by an unlikely
coalition of Democrats sympathetic to the embattled Haitian
government and by Republicans just as critical of it, who
see the measure as a way to jump-start the Haitian economy.

Manufacturers here say that if Congress were to approve
such an exemption in its next session, factory jobs could
triple. They also say it could spur other industries to
invest in Haiti, whose advantage as the hemisphere's least
expensive labor market has been outweighed by an
infrastructure that has deteriorated, partly because of a
freeze on foreign aid.

"This is a noncontroversial issue," said Jean-Edouard
Baker, a factory owner and past president of the Haitian
Manufacturers' Association. "This is not aid going to the
government. It is putting in place a structure that will
encourage investment and create jobs. We desperately need
jobs."

More than half of Haiti's population is unemployed or
barely subsisting on less than a dollar a day, and the
manufacturers say the situation is desperate.

At its peak, Haitian industry produced everything from
clothing and electronics to baseballs for the major
leagues. Its economic free fall began after Jean-Claude
Duvalier was ousted in 1986 and continued through the
economic embargo of the early 1990's, when Haiti was
isolated after a coup drove out the democratically elected
president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Although Mr. Aristide returned to Haiti after the American
invasion in 1994, manufacturing jobs did not. Political
deadlocks and accusations that Haiti was among the
countries that used child labor and sweatshop conditions
drove away existing clients, including Disney, which had
been a major customer. Those customers moved to more stable
places like Nicaragua and Honduras while keeping other
companies from even considering the island.

The manufacturers contend that the reports of abuses were
blown out of proportion but that they have corrected
problems and are monitored these days by companies that
give them contracts.

Manufacturers said they saw a way to spur jobs when
President Bill Clinton signed into law the African Growth
and Opportunity Act in 2000, which opened American markets
to a portion of African-produced clothing made with
non-American material.

"In every measure Haiti is similar to sub-Saharan Africa,"
said Jean Paul Faubert, the vice president of the
manufacturers' group. "So why not have trade parity?"

The proposal to extend trade benefits could help Haiti take
advantage of trends within the industry and the region, the
manufacturers say. Its closeness to the United States
provides for cheaper transportation and faster turnaround
at a time when stores are ordering with less lead time.

Factory owners in the Dominican Republic have also begun to
consider expanding or moving some operations into Haiti,
because manufacturing has been so successful there that
workers are demanding higher-paying jobs, like those
assembling electronic components.

Haitian workers receive about $2 a day and transporting
supplies to Haiti or finished goods from Haiti to the
United States is cheaper than for Honduras or Nicaragua,
which in recent years have gained 22,000 jobs from
companies based in the Dominican Republic.

Dominican and Haitian politicians, civic and business
leaders have already been exploring the possibility of
opening factories along their mutual border, where tensions
have always simmered over illegal Haitian immigration. They
have also begun to develop Free Zones like those in Central
America that provide concessions to manufacturers and
provide streamlined access to services ranging from
electricity and telecommunications to shipping and customs
procedures.

"The manufacturers are leaving the Dominican Republic and
looking for other places, anyway," Mr. Faubert said. "If
they can think of Haiti, they cannot only create more
employment, but improve security since people no longer
will have to cross the border. It is in everyone's national
interest to see the Haitian economy do better."

Outside the Classic Apparel factory here, street vendors
sit on dusty sidewalks selling piles of oranges or bottles
of motor oil. Most of the workers inside the factory could
just as easily end up on the street, Mr. Siegel said, since
it was only last month that a large order came in that
allowed him to rehire workers who had been idle for much of
the year.

Even then, the order was not big enough to fill all the
rows of sewing machines inside his cavernous factory.

"I wish we still had three factories," he said. "We had to
concentrate everything here and try to keep it alive. But
we need more jobs."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/23/international/americas/23HAIT.html?ex=1041645097&ei=1&en=b13b8ba2fabc2f1d
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company