Fast Track Derailed
The debate over NAFTA provided potent premonitions of what was to come in the “fast track” debate. The centerpiece of U.S. trade policy toward Latin America at the time, NAFTA set guidelines for eliminating most trade and investment barriers between Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Approved by the U.S. Congress in November 1993, NAFTA sparked bitter debate pitting U.S. corporations with overseas interests against a broad coalition of social groups, including unions and small business groups, concerned about the potential loss of U.S. jobs and downward pressures on wages, the potential detriment to the environment, and the economic impact in Mexico. NAFTA opened a schism in the Democratic Party over these issues that is still felt today.

Both NAFTA and its labor and environment side agreements were negotiated with “fast track” authority, under which negotiated trade pacts are voted on without amendments by the U.S. Congress. This facilitates negotiations by preventing the U.S. Congress from altering trade agreements when voting on them. But in late 1997 and again in September 1998, the Clinton administration failed to win “fast track” authority to negotiate trade agreements in order to advance its hemispheric free trade agenda in the wake of the December 1994 Miami Summit. No sooner had the hemisphere’s heads-of-state signed off on the economic integration project—a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by the year 2005—than it began to unravel. Within days of the summit, Mexico plunged headlong into a financial crisis that required a major U.S. financial bailout. Although NAFTA was not the cause of Mexico’s economic crisis, it compounded and accelerated the problems created by structural adjustment and trade policies in place for over a decade.

From that point on, both NAFTA and the FTAA became domestic political liabilities for President Clinton. In the midst of the Mexico crisis and in the heat of his 1996 reelection campaign, he was unwilling to request further negotiating authority from Congress. When he finally did request “fast track” authority in late 1997 to continue the integration agenda, Congress, at the urging of the majority of Democrats, promptly refused to comply. Clinton became the first president since Gerald Ford to be denied such authority. Not surprisingly, a subsequent congressional effort led by Republicans in September 1998 fared no better. With Congress in turmoil over the release of the Starr report and debating potential impeachment of the president, Clinton decided not to support the measure, fearing that he would further alienate fellow Democrats and would ignite a firestorm over a divisive issue within the Democratic Party just weeks before crucial midterm elections.

At every stage, Latin American governments and economic elites hoping to negotiate free trade deals with Washington, and thereby gain greater access to lucrative U.S. markets, were increasingly discouraged and disappointed. Following the first defeat of “fast track” authority, Foreign Policy editor Moises Naim commented that the “Washington consensus” on key economic tenets had taken hold throughout the region—with the apparent exception of Washington itself. The Clinton administration mantra of “trade, not aid” was ridiculed by many in the region as “neither trade nor aid.”

Leadership Vacuum
In Washington, discouragement set in as well. Latin America slipped lower and lower on the U.S. foreign policy agenda. A leadership vacuum became more pronounced, as high-level officials in Latin America-related posts failed to speak out forcefully to bring attention to the region and failed to win bureaucratic battles for scarce foreign aid resources. Key ambassadorships went unfilled for prolonged periods, including posts to Mexico and Argentina. The special presidential adviser on Latin America, Clinton’s boyhood friend Thomas “Mack” McLarty, announced his resignation and left the administration in mid-1998. Only the near-economic collapse in Brazil in the fall of 1998 refocused attention temporarily on Latin America, as U.S. officials again pulled together a multibillion-dollar bailout package to rescue the region’s largest economy and prevent spillover effects that could provoke a regional economic collapse.

The “fast track” debacle appears to have derailed U.S. policy toward Latin America. Efforts to promote free trade and economic integration continue, but U.S. policy toward the hemisphere increasingly lacks focus and leadership. (Perhaps the only important exception is the role the United States has played in supporting multilateral mediation efforts to resolve the Peru-Ecuador border conflict, which received sustained attention and resources from the administration and ultimately led to a brokered settlement.) As is often the case in Washington, issues are dealt with individually, and policies and programs often work at cross-purposes. Moreover, U.S. policy toward Latin America is increasingly driven by domestic agendas and by perceived threats emanating from the hemisphere: immigration, illicit drugs, and communist Cuba.

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