Pubdate: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA) Copyright: 1999 Union-Tribune Publishing Co. Contact: http://www.uniontrib.com/ Forum: http://www.uniontrib.com/cgi-bin/WebX A FORGIVING RELATIONSHIP Yet Drug Certification Process Does Highlight Simmering Issues Between Mexico And United States It's been a while since President Clinton was known to play the saxophone. Yet, while dining with his Mexican counterpart, Ernesto Zedillo, near the Yucatan city of Merida, Clinton sat in on a small combo and laid down an impromptu rendition of the torch standard, "My Funny Valentine." A paean to the two leaders' wives, no doubt, Clinton might just as well have been playing to his host. A major theme of Clinton's presidency, after all, has been the courtship of Mexico. His whirlwind Merida summit with President Zedillo this month was nothing less than a diplomatic love fest, meticulously scripted to send the message that relations are fundamentally sound between two very different countries that just happen to share a 2,000-mile-long border. "We are more than neighbors," Clinton proclaimed in a speech. "More and more, we belong to the same American family ... What binds us together is far, far more important than what divides us." Optimism has become a cornerstone of Clinton's foreign policy, whether the goal is to press for democratic change in China, force a Balkans truce or craft a lasting Mideast peace -- objectives that, to be sure, require mountains of faith to even pursue. Some analysts, though, are arguing for a bit less window dressing and a lot more candor from the White House when it comes to U.S.-Mexico relations, particularly in such thorny areas as trade, immigration and drug trafficking. Few had expected Clinton to change his tune in making his decision announced Friday to certify to Congress that Mexico is cooperating fully with U.S. efforts to combat the scourge of illegal drugs. Mexico has patently failed to thwart a massive narco-crime industry that U.S. authorities say will smuggle perhaps $30 billion worth of drugs into the United States this year -- about 60 percent of all the illicit drugs that will make their way onto the nation's streets. But that wasn't enough to stop Clinton from giving Mexico's counter drug efforts a passing grade; he signaled as much during the summit by praising Zedillo's commitment to a U.S.- Mexico alliance against drugs. Beyond his instincts to put the best possible face on a messy problem, Clinton downplayed the failings in Mexico's anti-drug efforts because to decertify would trigger painful sanctions against Mexico, a key U.S. economic partner, and risk shattering the relationship Clinton and Zedillo have met worked hard to forge. "Clinton is clearly doing backflips to be able to send up certification language to the Hill," said Mexico expert George Grayson, professor of government at the college of William & Mary, in Williamsburg, Va. To do otherwise, said Grayson, would "poison the relationship." Every year at this time, that relationship is tested by what has become a diplomatic rite of spring, when the White House grades the counter-narcotics efforts of Mexico and some 30 other countries that are major sources or distribution channels for drugs. Under a 1986 law, the president must certify to Congress by March 1 of each year whether these countries are cooperating fully with U.S. anti-narcotics efforts. Countries whose programs are decertified face immediate suspension of most U.S. aid -- humanitarian and counter-narcotics assistance are excepted -- unless the president decides to sustain assistance for national security reasons. Congress has 30 days in which to overturn the president's certification recom- mendations, through a joint resolution, or allow the White House ruling to stand. Frustration among congressional members -- and constituents angered by the flood of drugs from Mexico -- has crested for the past two years with vocal, if unsuccessful, legislative efforts to decertify Mexico. More sound and fury is expected this time around, particularly if the Clinton administration paints too rosy a picture of Mexico's failed anti-drug policies. "I just can't ratify, nor sanction, a concept that tells the people of both republics that this is coming along," said Sen. Paul Coverdell, R-Ga., a major player in the issue as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. "They need to make sure that it's absolutely clear that the progress has been limited." Mexico detests the certification process and the annual criticism it foments from its overbearing neighbor to the north. It is American drug consumption, Mexicans are quick to point out, that provides the rich incentives for narco-criminals, whose work undermines law and order in Mexico. "We feel that it's a unilateral, subjective and unfair process," Mexico's former ambassador to the United States, Jesus Silva-Herzog, said in a telephone interview from Mexico City. "It's difficult for us to understand how is it possible that the largest consumer of drugs in the world becomes the judge." Many in Washington recognize the Mexican government's frustration, and Coverdell said Zedillo -- who a few weeks ago earmarked for counter- narcotics efforts another $500 million -- deserves support for devoting high-level attention to the drug problem. And yet, Coverdell said, Mexico has done far too little to combat narco-traffickers, or to rid the country of the official corruption that enables them to operate. "The data remains terribly disturbing," he said. "We've got a lot of work to do here." The annual certification imbroglio gnaws at a relationship also strained by immigration and economic issues. Mexicans and Americans will make some 250 million legal border crossings this year, one indicator of the growing economic and cultural integration of the two countries. "With each crossing," said Clinton, "we move beyond mere diplomacy, closer to genuine friendship." Again, though, Clinton sees a glass that's half full. Roughly 150,000 Mexicans immigrate legally to the United States each year, adding richly to the country's pool of some 15 million Americans of Mexican descent, but also competing with native Americans for jobs while taxing the services of state and local governments. At least as many slip into the country illegally. But while numbers of illegal entries are fuzzy, Mexicans make up the largest block of the estimated 400,000 people of various nationalities who enter the country illegally each year, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C. think tank. What drives the mass movements is the vast disparity between living standards in Mexico, a nation of 95 million people with an average per capita income of $4,400 per year, and the United States, where, with 250 million people, per capita income averages seven times that amount. That wage gap has also driven a major restructuring of American industry, as thousands of U.S. manufacturers and suppliers have set up shop in Mexico, aided by the low tariffs and investment guarantees embodied in the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. Clinton, who ramrodded the NAFTA through a reluctant Congress in his first major, and still most dramatic, legislative victory, hails the integration of the two economies as a step forward for both countries. NAFTA, said Clinton, has strengthened both economies, providing a buffer from the ravages of the global economic crisis and a model for broader trade agreements he hopes might one day link the entire Western Hemisphere. Last year, as U.S. exports to hard-pressed Pacific Rim nations plummeted by 19 percent, two-way trade between the United States and Mexico grew 11 percent to nearly $175 billion. That placed Mexico in third place, behind Canada and virtually neck-and-neck with Japan, among U.S. trading partners. Mexico is on track to eclipse Japan this year as this country's number-two trading partner. "We must expand this oasis of confidence and growth in our hemisphere," Clinton said, reiterating his call for a Free Trade Area of the Americas stretching from the Yukon to the southern tip of Argentina. And yet, true to form, there's a flip side to the cheery portrait Clinton paints of the cross-border economic ties. NAFTA opponents complain bitterly that the agreement, which was negotiated by the Bush administration, has put to flight hundreds of American factories, large and small, which have invested some $30 billion building new plants in Mexico, sending good-paying jobs south of the border. The trade picture, moreover, is grossly distorted, these critics assert, because it counts as U.S. exports tens of billions of dollars each year of relatively low-value parts and raw materials that are shipped south and used to manufacture or assemble finished goods that Mexico then exports to this country. "They're processed in Mexico and sent right back here and the only effect it has on U.S. employment is to reduce it and the only effect it has on U.S. wages and incomes is to lower them," said trade expert Alan Tonelson, research fellow with the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a trade association representing more than 1,000 small and medium-sized manufacturing companies. "This is simply a trade policy that's designed to encourage outsourcing," said Tonelson, "to encourage U.S. corporations to move to Mexico and take advantage of low wages, lax regulations, etcetera." Adds Charles McMillion, chief economist for the Washington consulting group, MBG Information Services, "It has the effect of squeezing profits and squeezing wages in these companies and forcing them, if they possibly can, to move at least some of their production to Mexico. It's put incredible pricing pressure on them over the last couple of years." Plenty of other experts disagree. "I'm an unapologetic optimist on this," said Chandler Stolp, director of the U.S.-Mexican Policy Studies Program at the University of Texas in Austin. The shifts decried by NAFTA's critics, Stolp said, merely represent the rational corporate response to a low-wage base on the country's southern doorstep. That sort of integration, Stolp said, helps U.S. companies compete favorably against their overseas rivals, even as it offers Mexican workers a ladder up from poverty. "If trade were just a matter of selling finished products to each other, then Mexico and the United States really have very little to do with each other," said Stolp. "We're not competing with Mexico, we're partnering with Mexico." Clinton, for his part, concedes that the U.S.-Mexico economic relationship is imperfect, as are links on immigration and drugs. What's important, he maintains, is not to curse the darkness, but rather to light those candles that might be lit. "Any complex relationship will have its ups and downs," Clinton said in Merida. "But we know our differences cannot divide us." - --- MAP posted-by: Derek Rea