14182: LeGraceBensonFw: NYTimes.com Article: Haiti Requests Trade Act (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: LeGrace Benson <legrace@twcny.rr.com>
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> Haiti Requests Trade Act
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> December 23, 2002
> By DAVID GONZALEZ
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> 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 come
> cheaper. 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. These 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
> manufacturer's 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
> American 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, much
> less the two other factories that he closed.
>
> "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=1041
611894&ei=1&en=c39f3469eed225f5
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