WHAT ABOUT THE STEEL TARIFFS?!?:

How Free Trade Will Alter a Hemisphere (ELIZABETH BECKER, January 12, 2003, NY Times)

LAST week, the Bush administration opened negotiations to create a free-trade agreement similar to Nafta with five Central American countries, a large step in the administration's plans for a free-trade zone throughout the Western Hemisphere. An agreement with those countries - El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua - could be completed within a year and cause a rush of American investment to Central America, which only a few years ago was still reeling from effects of protracted civil wars. Peter Hakim, the president of Inter-American Dialogue, a research group in Washington, spoke last Thursday about an agreement's effects. [...]

Q. Just last month, the United States reached a free-trade accord with Chile. Why the expansion to Central America now?

A. The U.S. made a commitment to Chile back in 1994 at the Miami summit [where the United States and 32 Latin American countries pledged to create a free-trade area larger than Nafta by 2006]. The Chileans say the promise goes back to 1990. It was very hard to move on any other country before making good on that promise. Indeed, it would have been hard to move without Congress giving trade promotion authority [last summer]. Once negotiations began with Chile, it opened up the process for others.

First the Administration needed the Fast Track Authority. Then it needed to get a deal with Chile. Now it's moved on to the wider region. If you didn't know better, you'd think they'd had a plan for free trade all along... Posted by Orrin Judd at January 12, 2003 6:48 AM