23885: Craig (pub) Failing Haiti-Washington Post Editorial (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Dan Craig <sak-pase@bimini.ws>


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Failing Haiti
The Washington Post
Editorial
Saturday, December 11, 2004
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ROGER F. NORIEGA, the assistant secretary of state with responsibility
for the Caribbean region, takes umbrage at suggestions that the United
States has been quicker to send troops into Haiti than to alleviate its
appalling poverty. "Nothing could be further from the truth," Mr.
Noriega huffed last month in a letter to the St. Petersburg Times. Mr.
Noriega goes on to describe the lavish infusions of U.S. aid to Haiti
over the past decade -- most of it before the Bush administration took
office. He does not mention the Haitian Economic Recovery Opportunity
Act, known as HERO, a trade bill that could have provided tens of
thousands of jobs in the country's textile sector. Perhaps that's
because his administration let the bill die quietly in Congress without
lifting a finger to help.

In Haiti, the hemisphere's poorest nation, there are precious few
economic openings that hold the promise of relatively quick and
meaningful improvements in people's lives. The struggling textile
industry is one of them. HERO would have provided some duty-free access
to U.S. markets for low-priced T-shirts, shorts and sweatshirts
assembled in Haiti using foreign fabric. Allowing cheap fabric imported
from anywhere was a heady inducement for investors not otherwise eager
to do business given Haiti's poverty and political chaos; without it,
apparel makers would take their business elsewhere, probably to Asia.
And a small trade preference in U.S. markets would go a long way:
Duty-free access to 3 percent of the U.S. market would support 100,000
jobs in Haiti, according to some estimates.

Under pressure from textile-producing Southern states and their
representatives in Congress, the bill was watered down in the House. But
even that modest helping hand for Haiti was too much for two Southern
Republicans, Sen. Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and Sen. Jeff
Sessions of Alabama, who blocked a vote in the Senate, although as past
president of the American Red Cross, Mrs. Dole might have been expected
to grasp a thing or two about jobs and relief for desperately needy people.

Faced with the expiration of a quota system for textile imports at the
end of this year, many countries are requesting preferential access to
U.S. markets. But Haiti is in a category of its own. Its destitution is
staggering. The United States has sent troops there twice in the past
decade, each time pledging a renewed commitment to help lift Haiti's
sputtering economy. And Haiti's crises have a way of washing up on U.S.
shores. Yet when presented with an opportunity to help create jobs and
lift living standards in Haiti, the Bush administration took a powder.

The Washington Post
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Copyright © 2004 The Washington Post Company