Benefits of Neighborliness

On his South American tour, President Clinton has visited three countries that have the potential to be among America’s most important partners on the continent. Washington should seek improved political and economic relations with these hemispheric neighbors, Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina.

Consider: Venezuela has some of the world’s largest oil reserves and is a gateway country connecting Caribbean markets with the South American economies. Brazil is the largest Latin American market and the giant of Mercosur, the trading bloc of the so-called southern cone of South America. The final stop on the presidential tour was Argentina, perhaps America’s closest ally on the continent. The relationship is not without troubles, however. For instance, the Argentine government has been deservedly criticized for failing to press the investigation of anti-Semitic violence in 1992 and 1994 in Buenos Aires.

Clinton returns home Sunday with a better view of the dramatic transformation that has taken place in the region in the past seven years, a period that has seen the withering of military governments and the turnaround of hyperinflated economies. Tax collections have substantially increased, public expenditures have tightened and the efficiency of the public sector has improved.

Political change has advanced apace. Every Latin American country except Cuba now lives under democracy, although some systems are more polished than others. And every leader except Fidel Castro has been fairly elected. Relations between Washington and Latin American capitals have never been so good. The internal wars of the 1970s and 1980s between radicalized peasants and militaristic gentry have given way to democratic experiments.

How good can it get? A whole lot better if the White House and Congress come together on a more open trade policy. That was, after all, what Clinton promised in 1994 at the Summit of the Americas in Miami. But trade works two ways, and neither the Americans nor their potential partners have been able to find a formula that might work for all. Clinton has not, for instance, been able to win his bid for fast-track authority to close trade deals without prolonged congressional consideration.

The eagerness of Latin American nations to start pumping products into the U.S. market no doubt gives Congress pause, endangering the president’s promise to create a free-trade zone in the Americas by 2005. But that is no reason to fail to study the possibilities.

This was not a hardball trip. The Clinton party did as much sightseeing and celebrating as trade talking. But it’s been an eye-opening journey, long overdue. And it is not Clinton’s last opportunity to make good on his Miami promise of a free-trade zone in the Americas. He will meet with hemispheric leaders in Chile next March. The groundwork provided by this trip may pay off then.