The Fifth Summit of the Americas will be held in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, on April 17 to 19, and will be the first opportunity for Caribbean heads of government to meet with the new American president, Barack Obama.
A private-sector forum is preceding the Summit and started yesterday (April 15) and will end today, under the theme: 'Promoting Private Sector-led Prosperity in the Emerging Decade'. This will provide an opportunity for private-sector participants to network and partner with a wide cross section of business persons from the hemisphere.
This summit will also be the first meeting of all 34 democratic heads of government from Latin America, the Caribbean, Canada and the United States since the last summit in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in 2005, which was marred by violent protests.
The first summit was held in 1994 in Miami. Since then, there have been four high-level summits.
Thirty-four nations are expected to participate, and the central concern will be the global economic crisis and how the concerns of the region can be incorporated into the strategies that the United States will adopt.
CARICOM heads of government will be meeting on the margins of the summit to coordinate their own strategies and review the status of current trade negotiations, in particular with Canada.
The summit is taking place in a context in which, according to a recently released International Monetary Fund (IMF) report: "Global economic activity is falling - with advanced economies registering their sharpest declines in the post-war era -
Also, according to the World Trade Organisation (WTO): "The collapse in global demand brought on by the biggest economic downturn in decades will drive exports down by roughly 9 per cent in volume terms in 2009, the biggest such contraction since the Second World War."
ISSUES OF CONCERN
A major objective of the summit is to urge regional leaders to resist calls for protectionist measures that would curb imports or overseas investment, and to implement appropriate measures to mitigate the impacts of the economic crisis.
The US will be called upon to use its influence to encourage expanded resources and flexibility for the multilateral financial institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, and Inter-American Development Bank to assist developing countries to weather the crisis.
The region is also concerned about organised crime, the illicit drug trade, and immigration. Attendees will be expecting to hear Obama's positions on these issues.
OPPORTUNITIES IN CUBA
Many businesses in the hemisphere would like to take advantage of burgeoning opportunities in Cuba with the gradual opening up of the economy that is occurring, and would like to hear the US president elaborate on any new policy approaches to that country. Cuba's leader, Raul Castro, has not been invited to attend the summit.
Thomas McLarty, former White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration, noted that Latin American and Caribbean countries accounted for a fifth of all US international trade. US exports to Latin America each year are four times what the US exports to China. McLarty said the US now obtains more than 50 per cent of its energy imports from the Western Hemisphere, and more than half of that from Latin American and Caribbean suppliers.
US TRADE AGENDA
According to the US Trade Policy Agenda that was released in March, the president's policy priorities include:
"Support for the rules-based trading system."
The US reaffirms its commitment to the WTO system of multilateral trading rules and dispute settlement. The US is seeking to conclude a strong, market-opening agreement for both goods and services in the WTO's Doha Round negotiations, with the support of its trading partner, in which the value of new opportunities for US stakeholders is clearly defined.
The US is committed to the successful conclusion of the Doha Round negotiations, but this is only in so far as the US is able to obtain as much concessions as it gives. The implication for Jamaica is that we will need to begin to think about reciprocity in our trade relations with the US, notwithstanding existing preferential arrangements.
Please see part 2 in tomorrow's paper.