MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Central American leaders lobby US for trade deal

The leaders of all five Central American countries as well as the Dominican Republic visited Thursday the White House in a show of strength intended to revive the ailing efforts by the administration of President George W. Bush to push a controversial trade agreement through Congress.

With the administration still far short of the votes needed for passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (Cafta), the visiting presidents have spent the week in a highly unusual nation-wide effort to lobby recalcitrant Congress members.

However the powerful sugar lobby is determined to block the deal, arguing that even a tiny opening to sugar imports will undermine the protectionist regime that props up US prices. Democrats are pressing for tougher labour standards even though they are unlikely to support the treaty. Supporters say that only a sustained push by Mr Bush is likely to save the agreement in Congress.

Failure to win approval would be a dramatic setback for governments that have been among Mr Bush's most loyal allies and also have some of the region's most fragile economies.

Peter Hakim, president of Inter-American Dialogue, the Washington policy forum, says defeat of the accord by Congress, which is sounding increasingly protectionist, would severely undermine confidence in the most pro-US governments in the region. "It will be devastating for them," he says.

Since the settlement of its bloody civil wars in the early 1990s, Central America has been firmly within US orbit. While countries further to the south have elected a string of centre-left governments, Central America has turned rightwards, with business-minded governments coming to power seeking closer integration ties with the US. In the diplomatic field they have contributed to the US-led war in Iraq.

Besides tens of thousands of poor Central Americans have migrated to the US and their remittances have become one of the region's biggest sources of foreign exchange. Temporary trade preferences originally launched at the height of the political turmoil in the 1980s have allowed textile manufacturers to sell clothing duty-free into the US with revenues currently approaching almost 7 billion US dollars. Employment in the sector has soared from 70,000 in 1990 to 405,000 today.

Cafta is designed to bring Central America's fortunes even closer to those of the US in the same way that the North American Free Trade Agreement paved the way for closer economic integration among Mexico, the US and Canada.