Printed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Thursday,
April 24, 2003: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/118902_laos.html
Remove
a vestige of Vietnam War
As the United
States moves to conclude a new war in a new era, it has unfinished business
from a war in the now distant past. It is time to remove the last vestiges of
the Vietnam War in U.S. policy toward small, isolated Laos.
Laos is one of only
four countries from which the U.S. withholds Normal Trade Relations, with two others
under embargo.
Trade has been
normalized for years with Cambodia and more recently with Vietnam. In contrast,
a bilateral trade agreement with Laos has languished for six years. To breech
this divide, Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.S. Trade Representative
Robert Zoellick have asked Congress to extend NTR to Laos.
Congress should say
yes.
Laos is subject to
unfortunate extremes. Half the population lives below the government's own
defined poverty line. Laos has the lowest life expectancy in Southeast Asia,
and the highest fertility rate. It has the highest adult illiteracy rate,
particularly among women. Laos holds another dubious record: Having more
ordnance dropped on it by the United States during the "Secret War"
of the 1960s and 1970s than were used on Germany and Japan combined in World
War II.
Laotians are still
killed when they happen upon 30-year-old cluster bombs, which have entered the
lexicon with the deceptive nickname "bombies." As many as 10 million
unexploded bombs are commonly thought to remain in Laos, but some experts put
the number at three times more.
Economic isolation
makes solutions to such problems even more difficult. Laos faces the highest
tariffs in the world. In the absence of NTR, typical American tariffs on
Laotian goods average 45 percent, and rise 60 to 90 percent for products such
as T-shirts or bamboo chairs. By contrast, for the great majority of America's
223 trading partners -- including China, Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam -- tariffs
average 2.4 percent.
Granting NTR could
have a significant effect on the Laotian economy. Cambodia offers a ready
example. Since trade was normalized in 1996, Cambodian exports to the U.S. have
jumped to a billion dollars worth of clothes, which in turn has created 200,000
urban jobs.
However, this step
would have virtually no impact on the United States. At present, two-way trade
is a scant $8 million, which U.S. Ambassador to Laos Douglas Hartwick likens to
"less than the value of a handful of one-minute Super Bowl commercials."
By contrast, in the month of December 2002, U.S. foreign trade in exports and
imports exceeded $200 billion.
There is good
reason to extend NTR to Laos other than to reduce inequities and address the
legacy of the Vietnam War. In contrast to other former Cold War adversaries,
the Lao economy isn't state-controlled so much as subsistence-based. At this
juncture, it places very few restrictions on foreign business.
Extending NTR will
bring an immediate result by stimulating investment and urban job creation in
Laos. On a wider scale, it will support the administration's Enterprise for
ASEAN Initiative, a laddered plan to create free trade agreements with
Southeast Asian nations, by enabling Laos to step onto the first rung.
And it will give
Laos, landlocked and positioned among three regional economic powers -- China,
Vietnam and Thailand -- a more diverse trade portfolio, decreasing dependency
on any one neighbor. Laos needs all of the choices it can get.
The reflexive
position of Congress toward Laos for the last several decades has been one of
neglect. Some older generation groups of Laotian-Americans who immigrated at
the end of the Vietnam War oppose NTR, and they have been a significant force.
Younger generation Laotian Americans are more inclined to support NTR and,
because of their age, to view Laos in the present tense. If NTR is granted,
they will likely invest in Laos and provide much-needed technical expertise.
The Vietnam War
taught Americans that war can be long, but healing can be longer. Twenty-eight
years later, we still have one step left to take. Healing with Laos is long
overdue.
Catharin Dalpino, a former deputy U.S. secretary
of state, is a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Edward Gresser is director
of the Project on Trade and Global Markets at the Progressive Policy Institute.