CARICOM Looks to TIFA to Expand Beyond Preferential Program
CARICOM, the economic-integration organization covering the Caribbean Community, with 15 member states, believes its Trade and Investment Forum Agreement with the U.S. has been underutilized, and trade experts are brainstorming about ways to change that trajectory.
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Ambassador Wayne McCook, assistant secretary-general, CARICOM Single Market and Trade, said that member countries currently are heavily focused on areas that emerged after the Summit of the Americas -- energy security, food security and finance -- but said that this committee work could complement work in the TIFA. He said that in 2018, CARICOM states had $35.3 billion in two-way trade with the U.S., with a roughly $12 billion trade surplus for the U.S.
"We are hopeful that the post-summit process of intensive engagement … will catalyze engagement in the trade and investment area," he said, though he noted that it's more complicated for CARICOM to engage than a single state, like Uruguay. The webinar, hosted by the University of The West Indies' trade law and trade policy center, included a presentation from Uruguay about how that country abandoned the idea of negotiating a free trade agreement with the U.S. because of Uruguay's commitment to Mercosur, but how Uruguay leveraged a TIFA to rapidly grow both goods and services exports.
Andrea Ewart, owner of DevelopTrade Law in Washington, D.C., and a Caribbean Policy Consortium fellow, argued that the success that Uruguay achieved is "not at all beyond the reach of CARICOM countries." She noted that Jamaica's population is not that much smaller than Uruguay's, and when you combine all the English-speaking Caribbean, the population is far larger.
She said one of the weaknesses of the U.S.-CARICOM Trade and Investment Council, which is part of the TIFA structure, is that the U.S. drives the agenda. She said it is "very often used as an opportunity to beat up on CARICOM in terms of things they should have done."
She noted that as the U.S.-Ecuador Trade and Investment Council has reactivated, Ecuador is working on creating a public website with customs regulations, procedures, inquiry points, technical regulations, sanitary and phytosanitary regulations for import and export, and that the private sector in the Caribbean has complained that there is not easily accessible information of this nature. She said establishing a website like this would be a desirable outcome of U.S.-CARICOM trade engagement.
David Lewis, a vice president at Manchester Trade in Washington and a co-chair at the Caribbean Policy Consortium, said he's been talking with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative since 2008 about the need to focus on services exports from the Caribbean. He said the region needs to graduate "beyond the strict goods-centered unilateral trade preferences."
While McCook questioned how much of an example Uruguay can provide, since its stance on trade is to open markets and the Caribbean countries tend to be defensive, Lewis said being more defensive on free trade "is not necessarily a disadvantage." He said a TIFA can have all the advantages of an FTA with none of the political costs.
Lewis said Caribbean services, telecom, educational services, technology and agribusiness sectors need to be at the table with CARICOM and the U.S. talk, along with those representing labor, gender rights, the environment and indigenous rights. "Trade is too important to be left only to the trade experts," he said.
Braeden Young, director for Mexico and the Caribbean at USTR, told the group, "We really value stakeholder engagement." He added, "We appreciate the countries in the Caribbean have different concerns, levels of development. The Caribbean is not a monolith."
Although Lewis and McCook disagreed on how open CARICOM has been to private sector consultation on trade priorities, Lewis agreed with McCook that after the Summit of the Americas, "the ecosystem is primed ... on both sides to really advance on deeper and broader engagement."
He suggested integrating the private sector viewpoints could be as simple as having a two-hour session across a two-day TIC meeting where U.S. and Caribbean private sector actors can discuss business-to-business sales, e-commerce and services trade. "We need policy and transactional help," he said.