[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 71 (Tuesday, June 4, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4956-S4960]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
H.R. 3009, ANDEAN TRADE PREFERENCE ACT
Mr. LUGAR. Mr. President, I wish to take a moment to discuss a
security problem that exists in the Andean Trade Preference Act
extension contained in H.R. 3009, as amended and passed by the Senate,
and which must be addressed. The problem is that, in an understandable
effort to support Andean economies by providing tuna export
preferences, this bill unfairly harms the economies of Thailand,
Indonesia, and the Philippines. Providing trade preferences to one
ally, or regional bloc, at the expense of others is patently unfair.
The problem this bill creates for the Philippines, and for American
interests in the Philippines, is particularly troublesome. The entire
tuna industry in the Philippines is located in the southern region of
Mindanao. It is in Mindanao that Muslim terrorist cells, with reported
ties to al-Quaeda, are operating. In order to combat the terrorist
threat in the southern Philippines, American troops have recently been
deployed to Mindanao and are training Philippine forces to track down
terrorists. Damaging the Philippines' tuna export market by tipping the
scale in favor of other countries will damage the single largest
employer and increase instability in the exact area where U.S. troops
are deployed to help create stability.
If that were not enough, Mindanao's tuna industry was largely created
by U.S. and other donor nations' assistance as a means to increase
opportunities and provide jobs for former guerrillas. This effort
succeeded and the majority of Muslim separatists in Mindanao have laid
down their arms. Disrupting Mindanao's tuna industry will not only
create economic instability in a strategically sensitive region, it
will waste past investments of U.S. taxpayer money and could return
some former Muslim fighters to their violent ways.
I see my colleague from Alaska, the ranking member of the
Appropriations Committee on the floor. He may wish to say a word about
this matter since he was responsible for bringing this issue to the
attention of many Senators.
Mr. STEVENS. I thank my colleague and I agree with him about he
seriousness of this matter. Senator Inouye and I became aware of this
problem on a recent trip to Asia during which we met with officials in
Beijing, Singapore, Jakarta, and Manila. All of our meetings had one
common element--terrorism. Since that trip, Senator Inouye and I have
been working to find a solution to this national security problem.
As many of my colleagues may know, radical elements in Indonesia are
currently trying to dominate the political and business communities in
that country. In Singapore, we were made aware of terrorist attempts to
attack the American Embassy with a plot involving 100 tons of
explosives. The federal building in Oklahoma City was destroyed with
only 3 tons of explosives.
The major area of concern, however, is the Philippines, and in
particular the province of Mindanao where the notorious Abu Sayyaf
Group is kidnapping innocent people and wreaking havoc through bombings
and murders. The general populace does not support this element, and
have therefore been victimized. Currently at the invitation of the
Philippine Government, American troops are in Mindanao advising and
training Philippine troops to more effectively combat this terrorist
threat. The Philippines is clearly on the frontline in the war against
terror.
Now, the major employee in Mindanao is the canned tuna industry. The
bill before us will do significant harm to this industry. If the major
employer in Mindanao is not able to maintain economic stability, the
chaos in Mindanao will be exacerbated. Damaging the economy of
Mindanao, as this bill will do, undermines the ongoing U.S.-Philippine
counter-terrorism operation. To harm an ally in the war on terror in
this manner clearly is not in the national security interest of the
United States.
I strongly urge that a solution to this problem be found before the
conference report is presented to this body.
Mr. LUGAR. I thank my colleague for that explanation and for bringing
this matter to the Senate's attention. I certainly will join him in
seeking a solution to this important national security matter. The only
fair solution is to maintain tariff parity for our anti-terrorism
allies who compete in this market. I believe my colleague from Missouri
would like to make a comment.
[[Page S4957]]
Mr. BOND. I thank my friend for yielding. I, too, would like to
express my concern over the dire consequences extending preferential
tariff treatment of packed tuna to the Andean region will have on our
ASEAN allies. I believe maintaining stability in Mindanao is of utmost
importance and I do not want to see our war on drugs succeed at the
expense of our war on international terrorism. I urge our colleagues to
address this issue during conference deliberations.
Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in
expressing concerns about the effects, however unintended, that the
proposed duty-free status for Andean nations would have on the canned
tuna industry in the Philippines. I refer specifically to the status
that would be accorded to canned tuna imports from Ecuador. I spoke
during the debate on the harm the current provisions will do to the
Philippine economy and how seriously it will undermine the anti-
terrorist efforts in the Philippines and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
But I want to point out again that the tuna industry in the Philippines
is located in precisely the area where anti-terrorist efforts are most
urgently needed.
Clearly a multitude of issues are involved in any trade legislation.
This issue is too important to be ignored and it is my hope that this
serious problem will be resolved in the conference report when it comes
before us for final passage.
Mr. LUGAR. For the benefit of our colleagues, I will ask that two
recent articles from the New York Times and one from the Asian Wall
Street Journal be printed in the Record at the end of this colloquy.
These articles detail the importance of the tuna industry to Mindanao
and its strong connection to counter-terrorism efforts.
Mr. TORRICELLI. I appreciate my colleagues raising this national
security issue today. The unintended consequences of biasing our tuna
tariffs against the Philippines were brought to my attention by both
the Philippine Ambassador, as well as through the work of my
distinguished colleagues. I am deeply concerned about how this bill
will undermine America's counter-terrorism work in Mindanao and fully
support the view that this issue must be resolved before the conference
report is presented to the Senate.
Enough has already been said about how undermining Mindanao's largest
employer will spread instability, harm America's image, and waste past
taxpayer investment in a critically important region. I do not need to
elaborate further on those points. I would like to take just a moment,
however, to highlight for my colleagues how this ill-advised provision
came to be. The House Ways and Means Committee initially added it to
their Andean trade bill. It was not part of the administration's
request for Andean counter-narcotics legislation. It was added without
a hearing and without examination of the national security implications
of making this change in trade law.
When the bill came before the Senate Finance Committee, the committee
voted to limit the extent of the preference granted to the Andean
countries. I supported that change as an improvement in the bill, but
it did not go far enough to resolve the matter. I was hopeful that
suggestions made by Senators Inouye and Stevens might be included into
this bill to actually solve the problem created by this tuna provision.
Fixing this provision on the floor, however, will not now be possible.
Therefore, I join my colleagues in urging that parity be maintained for
all America's friends seeking to participate in our tuna market.
Tipping the balance of this market toward one group and away from
another is unfair, wasteful, shortsighted, and counter to America's
broader international interests.
Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, assisting Andean countries combat illicit
narcotics is an important national security goal for the United States.
The Foreign Relations Committee has heard considerable testimony from
the administration and other witnesses as to the importance of this
issue, both for the United States and for the maintenance of democracy
in South America. Much effort and resources are already being devoted
to this important goal, and the Administration plans to do still more.
The Andean Trade Preferences Act extension passed by the Senate adds
important additional support to this effort.
At the same time, however, the United States and our allies are also
engaged in a war against terrorism. Defeating global terrorism is a
goal no less important than eradicating narcotics trafficking. One of
the frontline States in the war against terrorism is the Philippines
where, at the invitation of the Philippine Government, U.S. troops have
been deployed to train the Armed Forces of the Philippines in
counterterrorism. The reason our joint counterterrorism mission with
the Philippines is relevant to discussion of the Andean trade bill is
because one provision contained in this bill, in a laudable effort to
support the legitimate economies of Andean countries, will seriously
damage our counter-terrorism effort in the Philippines.
The problematic provision is one that would give preference to Andean
countries that export tuna to the United States. The primary loser in
the tuna market would be countries in the Asia-Pacific region,
especially our close treaty allies Thailand and the Philippines.
Moreover, the Philippines' tuna industry is based in the southern
province of Mindanao, precisely the region in which we are engaged in
our counterterrorism mission. Indeed, Mindanao's tuna industry is in
part the result of a successful U.S. foreign assistance program which
helped develop economic alternatives for Muslim insurgents that have
been active in the region for many years. I say this economic
development program has been successful in Mindanao because most of the
former insurgents have laid down their weapons and joined mainstream
life in the Philippines. Only the most radical remain terrorists.
So, in the Philippines today we have a successful counterterrorism
effort underway that incorporates both economic incentives to give
people a reason to participate in civil society, and military action
against the few extremists who remain committed to violence. We cannot
afford to remove one of the pillars of this effort by giving a
competing trade advantage to Andean countries. This must be corrected
as this bill moves to conference.
Mr. LUGAR. As stated at the beginning of this colloquy, in addition
to the Philippines, the economies of Thailand and Indonesia may also be
impacted by this bill. We are hoping the points expressed in this
colloquy will be addressed in conference.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the newspaper articles to
which I referred earlier be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the New York Times, May 21, 2002]
Reduced Tariffs for Some Nations Strains Relations With Others
(By Keith Bradsher)
General Santos City, the Philippines, May 16.--How should
the United States set its tariffs and trade rules, globally
or country-by-country?
It is no arid academic debate to the tuna fishermen of this
knockabout port city on the south coast of Mindanao, nor to
sugar cutters in the Caribbean or garment workers in
Pakistan. Faraway changes in American fine print can have
very real, sometimes unintended consequences.
A move in Congress to extend trade preferences to Andean
nations, in part to help wean their economies off coca
production, could lead to the layoff of thousands of Muslim
workers in the tuna industry here, even as American troops
help the Philippine army fight Abu Sayyaf Muslim insurgents
in this region.
In Pakistan, officials have struggled to win a larger quota
for textile shipments to the United States as a reward for
Islamabad's help during the conflict in Afghanistan. And in
the Caribbean, the emergence of any especially pro-American
government brings a request for a larger quota to ship sugar
to the high-priced, highly protected American market.
By returning to the pre-1922 practice of awarding
preferential trade treatment to certain countries and
regions, often for political rather than economic reasons,
Washington now finds itself constantly badgered for trade
concessions by whatever friendly nation is in the news at any
given moment.
This is the problem that ``most favored nation'' status was
supposed to solve. When countries won that status--as nearly
all of America's trading partners did in recent decades--they
were assured that their exports would get the same tariff
treatment as any other, and that generally, concessions
awarded to one would be awarded to all.
After the ruinous bilateral trade competition in Europe in
the 1930's, the United States backed a global adoption of the
same
[[Page S4958]]
approach, leading in the decades after World War II to the
international trade rules enshrined in the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade and later to the creation of the World
Trade Organization.
``The history of trade negotiations basically was that,
because of the bilateral special deals that inevitably made
other nations unhappy, we came around to most-favored-nation
treatment and GATT negotiations,'' said William Cline, a
senior economist at the Institute for International Economics
in Washington.
Up through the 1980's, most economists criticized regional
trade agreements as just as bad as bilateral deals. Beyond
making winners of some countries and losers of others,
regional blocs can be bad for global efficiency, by promoting
importers to favor a higher-cost producer within the bloc
over a lower-cost producer outside whose goods are still
subject to high tariffs and quotas.
Global trade agreements minimize such drawbacks, because
these days very few countries remain outside them. But global
treaties are becoming increasingly difficult to conclude. The
last was wrapped up in Geneva in 1993; talks meant to produce
the next one did not get under way until last November in
Doha, Qatar, and are expected to take years.
But the regional free trade concept has become fashionable
again, in great part because of the success of the European
Union, which hugely increased trade among its 15 members by
eliminating tariffs and trade barriers. It helped inspire the
1992 North American Free Trade Agreement--joining the United
States, Canada and Mexico--as well as several other regional
groupings.
One provision of the Nafta treaty helped set off the
dispute now roiling American efforts to retain the support of
the Philippines in the war on terrorism.
Among the tariffs to be eliminated within North America by
the treaty is the American duty on canned tuna imported from
Mexico. It will not disappear until 2008, and for the moment
it means little because Mexico, well north of the equatorial
waters where the best fishing grounds are found, has a tiny
tuna industry. But tuna from other countries is subject to
duty of up to 35 percent, creating a big incentive for Mexico
to build up its tuna fleet, despite the high labor and fuel
costs for the long journeys to where the tuna swim.
Several smaller Central American and Caribbean nations also
have small tuna fleets; three years ago, Congress agreed to
phase out tuna duties for them on the same timetable.
To the Andean nations of South America, these concessions
posed a serious threat--that preferential access to the
United States would soon make big new competitors out of
Mexico and Central America. The United States had lower
tariffs on many products from Andean nations like Ecuador and
Colombia in 1991, but canned tuna was not among them. When
the 1991 concessions came up for renewal last year, the
Andean nations, supported by Starkist, demanded that they be
expanded to include canned tuna.
Ecuador has a huge tuna fishing fleet, and Colombia a
smaller one; both countries are eager to create jobs that do
not depend on narcotics trafficking. That persuaded the House
of Representatives to approve a bill earlier this year that
would immediately eliminate duty on Andean tuna.
A more limited bill that would phase out duty on about a
third of current shipment is before the Senate as part of a
broader trade bill. If it passes, differences between the
provisions would be worked out in a conference of senators
and representatives.
Now it is the Philippines' turn to feel threatened. Letting
Ecuador and Colombia, but not the Philippines, ship tuna to
the United States duty free would be both unfair and unwise,
officials in Manila are warning, because of the hardship it
would create in this poor, Muslim and sometimes rebellious
part of the country, where terrorists are believed to be
active. ``We understand you want to do this because of
narcotics,'' said Manuel A. Roxas II, the country's secretary
of trade and industry, ``but terrorism is just as
important.''
Washington has been on notice for some time that this kind
of chain reaction of anger and demands for relief was likely
to develop. An influential report by the United States Tariff
Commission foresaw that special deals for some countries
would ``lead to claims from states outside the agreement
which, if granted, defeat the purpose of the treaties, and
which, if not granted, occasion the preferring of a charge of
disloyalty to treaty obligations.''
The report was published in 1919.
____
[From the New York Times, May 16, 2002]
Drugs, Terror and Tuna: How Goals Clash
(By Keith Bradsher)
General Santos City, The Philippines, May 15.--This
industrial city on the southern coast of Mindanao Island
illustrates how America's various strategic aims in the wars
on drugs and terrorism can clash, alienating important allies
engaged in battling terrorism.
Among leaders of the Philippines' important tuna industry
here, resentment is running high over trade legislation now
on the Senate floor in Washington. The bill includes a
provision to eliminate steep import taxes on canned tuna from
Andean nations while keeping taxes in place for other
countries like the Philippines.
The provision has attracted Congressional support because
it is seen as bolstering America's war on drugs. The idea is
that the bill help create well-paid jobs in Ecuador and
Colombia as an alternative to the drug trade.
But in another war--the one against terrorism--the
legislation is causing anger in a country that has become an
important part of the administration's plans.
It comes at a time when 600 American soldiers are helping
the Philippine Army track Abu Sayyaf Muslim insurgents in the
southernmost Philippines, and President Gloria Macapagal
Arroyo has staked much political capital on helping the
United States fight terrorism.
Virtually all of the tuna industry of the Philippines is
located here and it employs thousands of migrant workers from
small Muslim fishing communities that used to be bastions of
various Muslim insurgencies. Local officials warn that the
legislation could wipe out the tuna industry.
President Arroyo said that passage of the trade provision
would deal a severe blow to the economy here while handing a
propaganda victory to the Abu Sayyaf movement.
The combination would create heavy domestic pressure for
the Philippines to retreat from its active support for the
American war on terrorism, she warned in a telephone
interview tonight.
``I will try very hard not to, but I will be under
tremendous pressure,'' she said.
In much of the developing world, including Latin America
and Africa, trade restrictions on tariffs on products ranging
from steel to textiles are causing growing resentment toward
the United States. The perception that the Bush
administration is a projectionist one is growing.
President Arroyo argued that General Santos, the main city
on the southern coast of Mindanao and home to most of the
Philippines' tune fishing fleet and canneries, was central
both to the economic future of this region and to the fight
against terrorism.
A powerful pipe bomb with nails exploded on a crowded
sidewalk outside a supermarket here on April 21, killing 15
people and wounding dozens. A second pipe bomb was safely
defused before it exploded at another supermarket the same
day, and two shopping complexes have recently burned down
here in the middle of the night in separate, unexplained
incidents.
Police detectives here say that they are still unsure
whether the attacks were terrorist incidents, criminal
attempts at extortion or some combination of the two. But
President Arroyo expresses no such doubts, saying tonight,
`The Abu Sayyaf has been trying to get into General Santos
and it has been very difficult for us to justify our support
for the United States.''
In a city where tunas festoon everything from billboards to
restaurant signs, and where even the golf tournament is the
Tuna Cup, the fishing industry's influence is impossible to
miss.
Workers heave baskets of fish onto crude steel carts, which
they then pull by hand over to a long open-sided shed. Women
wash and sort the fish on long tables, the concrete floor
beneath them dark and slippery with fish blood. A few larger
tuna, some the size of a man, are carried individually to
large, white boxes packed with half-melted ice, to be shipped
directly to Japan to be turned into sashimi.
Renato Alonzo, 47, a fisherman in a ragged T-shirt and
flip-flops whose boat had just docked after two weeks at sea,
said that he had sold his tiny farm and joined a boat crew 10
years ago after learning he could nearly double his income,
to roughly $4,000 a year. Now he can afford to send his two
sons, aged 12 and 8, to school.
The bustling fishing port here and the nearby row of tuna
canneries contrast sharply with most of Mindanao, where
peasants still toil on subsistence farms and on large
pineapple and coconut plantations. Years of drought, coupled
with inadequate irrigation, have crippled agriculture while
the global glut of low-priced steel has forced the closing of
a big steel mill in northern Mindanao.
The tuna industry here barely existed until the late 1980's
when the United States led Japan, Italy and other donor
nations in an ambitious foreign aid program aimed at
rebuilding the Philippines after the fall of Ferdinand
Marcos.
A full-scale guerrilla war being waged in Mindanao then, a
far broader conflict than the handful of kidnappings and
possibly bombings linked to Abu Sayyaf now. General Santos
City was nearly surrounded by several very large insurgences
that attracted poor youths from the island's Muslim minority.
The city had a small fishing fleet, but it mostly caught fish
for local consumption.
But the world's richest fishing grounds lay between here
and Indonesia, although boats from Thailand mainly fished
them then. Foreign donors built the fishing port here as well
as a large cargo airport, a container port, extensive roads
and a modern phone system, hiring security guards from rebel
forces and buying sand, gravel and other construction
materials from rebel leaders' businesses.
With ready transportation to foreign markets, six big
canneries were built, each employing more than 1,000 workers.
The only two other tuna canneries in the Philippines are in
Zamboanga City in southwestern Mindanao, the staging area for
American troops pursuing Abu Sayyaf. Some 30,000 fishermen
now supply the canneries.
The tuna boom has helped persuade all of the rebel
movements except the Abu Sayyaf
[[Page S4959]]
splinter group to lay down their arms under armistices with
the government. Many former rebel commanders and foot
soldiers have taken jobs at the canneries, which have had no
problem with the bombings that have afflicted shopping
centers.
Abuhasan Jama is a former major in the Moro National
Liberation Front who studied guerrilla warfare in Malaysia in
1979 and 1980 and then spent 13 years fighting the Philippine
government in the jungles of Mindanao.
Now he is the security chief at Ocean Canning here, his
eldest daughter is in college and he has found jobs at the
same cannery for three cousins who are also former
guerrillas. ``I like to work,'' said Mr. Jama, 41, recalling
that in the jungle ``sometimes you'd just eat leaves, the
roots.''
Mariano M. Fernandex, the general manager of Ocean Canning,
said that he used to carry two Smith & Wesson handguns, one
strapped on each hip. ``It was like the Wild West here,'' he
said, adding that he carries only a cellphone now.
Most of the tuna canned her is sold in the United States
under less famous brands like Keisha and Dagim. Bumble Bee
and Starkist used to buy large quantities of tuna here but
have recently begun relying on Ecuador instead, allowing that
country to edge past the Philippines last year to become the
second-largest foreign supplier of tuna to the United States,
after Thailand.
Starkist in particular is now pushing for the elimination
of import tariffs on canned tuna from Ecuador.
____
[From the Asian Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2002]
Poor Countries Find Free Trade Brings Few Gains; Tariffs on Tuna Trade
Snag; Philippine Fishing City: `We Were Very Naive'
(By James Hookway)
The gospel of free trade is wearing thin in this remote
fishing city.
Freshly caught deep-sea tuna are so inexpensive here that
visitors buy them whole and check them in as luggage at the
bustling little airport. Back in Manila, passengers crowd
round the baggage claim, hoping for an early glipmse of their
catch emerging on the conveyors belt trussed up in yards of
plastic wrap.
Being so close to the rich tuna belt in the tropical waters
separating the Philippines and Indonesia gives General Santos
City a head start that is hard to beat in the fish business.
Sashimi and sushi aficionados in Japan prize Philippine tuna
for its high quality and low price. Free trade and the advent
of the World Trade Organization were supposed to help the
town build on that advantage by opening more markets for its
fish. Instead, Europe and the U.S. are putting up tariff
barriers that threaten the jobs of cannery workers here,
stunting economic growth in one of the most volatile corners
of Southeast Asia--a place where U.S. soldiers have recently
brought the war on terrorism.
And, along with a slew of recent restrictions from rich
nations, several of which are headed for the WTO's dispute-
resolution process, the tariffs are starting to sour many
Filipinos on the free-trade agenda their government
enthusiastically signed on to in the 1990s. ``We thought the
WTO was an idealistic thing, but nobody is abiding by its
true spirit,'' says Domingo Teng, who leads the local tuna
federation in between fishing trips. ``We were very naive.''
That's a perception many poorer countries are beginning to
share. A ground-swell of skepticism about the WTO has been
building steadily since the pied piper of free trade, the
U.S., imposed duties of as much as 30% on steel imports in
February. Thailand and Indonesia quickly followed suit, and a
month later, Malaysia imposed its own 50% steel tariff.
Developing countries, especially India, Pakistan and Egypt,
bitterly complained that the WTO hadn't done enough to
improve access for their products to rich markets at the
body's ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar, in November. The
tension eased somewhat when richer countries agreed to
further open key agricultural, fishery and textile markets in
the next round of trade talks, due to conclude by the end of
2003.
Still, disappointment is rife in Asia, even among committed
free traders. ``There is a lot of disenchantment,'' says Alex
Magno, president of the Manila-based Foundation for Economic
Freedom. ``Free trade hasn't produced a lot of winners. What
we have here in the Philippines are losers, particularly in
garments and other labor-intensive industries. They can't
compete with more inexpensive producers such as China.'' This
resentment could worsen soon. President George W. Bush signed
a new U.S. farm bill this week that will boost crop and dairy
subsidies for American farmers. An 18-nation group of
agricultural exporters warns that the scale of the $180
billion six-year farm-aid program will hurt farmers around
the world and threatens negotiations for freer world
trade. ``The impact will be particularly damaging on
developing countries,'' the group said in a statement
released in Geneva on Wednesday.
Of all the developing economies in Asia it was perhaps the
Philippines that most enthuisiastically embraced free trade
in the latter half of the 1990s. While Malaysia carefully
protected its car industry and Thailand and Indonesia
nurtured their cement markets, the Philippines accelerated a
series of tariff reductions. Despite foot-dragging on opening
up its retail industry to foreign hypermarkets, among other
stalled pledges, the Philippines has generally been keen to
shake off the shackles of a protectionist economy that left
the country dawdling during Asia's boom years.
Yet while the Philippines has benefited from investments
geared toward call centers and microprocessors, more
traditional industries that employ the bulk of the country's
work force have struggled. In Manilia's Divisoria market, the
piles of T-shirts and jeans stacked in the stalls arrive from
China; just a few years ago, most were made locally. Facing
rising unemployment at home, more and more Filipinos are
joining the line for visas at the U.S. Embassy in the hope of
joining relatives in America. ``The orthodoxy that more free
trade will lead to better lives has been severely
challenged,'' says Philippine Trade Secretary Manuel Roxas
II.
The Philippines is particularly upset with new tariff
barriers to the European Union. While tuna from former
European colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific is
levy-free, canned tuna from the Philippines is slapped with a
bruising 24% tariff. Mr. Roxas can hardly believe it. ``We
were a Spanish colony for 300 years,'' he says. ``What more
do they want?'' EU officials deny that the tariff waiver
hurts the Philippine tuna industry.
U.S. legislators, meanwhile, are moving toward reviving 10-
year-old reductions in import tariffs on packaged tuna,
textiles and cut flowers as a way to wean Ecuador, Bolivia,
Peru and Colombia off the drug trade. Senators are being
lobbied hard by H.J. Heinz Co.'s StarKist Foods to cut the
tariffs. StarKist fishes and cans tuna in Ecuador, and
cutting the Latin American tariffs will be a shot in the arm
for its business. It would also make Philippine tuna look
much more expensive.
Ignoring trade agreements is nothing new, of course, and
the WTO hasn't proven to be particularly speedy at resolving
trade disputes. Trade Secretary Roxas, however, is still keen
on giving it a go, at least for the time being. ``Let's see
where it gets us,'' he says. He will soon have his chance.
The Philippines' tuna row with Europe is headed for the WTO,
as is a dispute with Australia over bananas. Manila is
anxious to increase fruit exports to Australia, but farmers
there have successfully lobbied the government to keep
restrictions in place. Politicians in Canberra explain that
scientists haven't finished checking whether Philippine
bananas are disease-free and safe to import. The country
harbors five diseases, collectively known as the Black
Plague. Australian farmers worry that such imports could
decimate their crops, and government quarantine officials now
are conducting a risk analysis on importing the bananas,
which isn't likely to be completed soon. Meanwhile,
Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo finds it
difficult to contain her frustration. ``Sad to say,
sanitary requirements and technical standards now seem to
be the weapon of choice for protectionists,'' she told
business leaders in Malaysia.
But it is the tuna industry that stirs the strongest
passions. General Santos City, carefully mapped out just
before World War II, features broad, quite avenues instead of
the packed and pot-holed roads found in most Philippine
cities. But this sleepy backwater is also a place where
fortunes are made.
The source of those riches lies in the natural deep-water
bay the town straddles. Scores of tuna boats steam in every
morning to unload their cargo at the town's gleaming port,
sometimes after three months at sea. A kilometer or two down
the road, the General Tuna Corp. cannery churns out more than
300,000 cans of tuna a day for brands such as Chicken of the
Sea, Century Tuna and Fresca. Other factories line the coast
nearby. Outrigger boats meanwhile, head out to deeper waters
in the hope of landing a bluefin tuna. In Tokyo, bluefin
retail for around the price of a Toyota Corolla.
``When I first came here in 1991, there wasn't much of
anything,'' recalls Neil del Rosario, plant manager at the
General Tuna cannery. ``Now there are hardware stores, beauty
parlors, restaurants. McDonald's is coming here soon. The
tuna industry has made such a big impact on the community.''
More than half of General Santos's 400,000 citizens are
dependent on tuna in one form or another. Mr. Teng, the head
of the fishing federation, says many more jobs would be
created if the tariffs are dropped quickly. ``This place
could really take off,'' he says.
The tuna industry can also help stabilize one of the more
volatile corners of Southeast Asia. Not far from General
Santos, about 1,000 U.S. special forces are training
Philippine troops to track down a Muslim guerrilla group
linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. The Abu Sayyaf
has kidnapped scores of foreigners over the past few years,
and is currently holding hostage an American missionary
couple and a Filipino nurse. To the north, a larger but less
violent rebel army is in peace talks with the Philippine
government.
The 30-year-old uprising has killed more than 120,000
people and severely retarded Mindanao's economy. The tuna
industry, however, helps provide jobs for Muslims who might
otherwise be tempted to join the decades-old rebellion
against Christian domination.
Government officials argue that if the U.S. is willing to
waive tariffs in Latin America to aid its war on drugs, then
it should also lift barriers on the Philippine tuna trade to
help the war on terrorism. For the time being, though,
General Santos will have to
[[Page S4960]]
tighten its belt. General Tuna has cut back to running at 75%
capacity; other canneries are running at just half-time. And
if there isn't any work, there isn't any pay. Mr. Teng is
beginning to worry about the consequences of the trade war.
``We need development before there is peace,'' he says.
``Let's give these rebels the chance to come down out of the
hills. Maybe they can become millionaires too.''
____________________