Word: basins
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...level, it was a generous and good-neighborly offer to promote prosperity among the almost two dozen diverse countries of the Caribbean Basin. On a more strategic plane, it was designed as a political instrument to deter domestic turmoil in a region ripe for left-wing revolutions. And on its most basic level, Ronald Reagan's Caribbean Basin Initiative, announced amid much fanfare to the Organization of American States last week, is the logical outgrowth of an agonizing yearlong struggle to support the beleaguered current government of El Salvador and draw the line against further expansion of Soviet...
...plan to keep the Caribbean Basin out of Cuba's orbit by pulling on its economic bootstraps is rooted in what the President likes to call the "magic of the marketplace." Said he: "It is an integrated program that helps our neighbors help themselves, under which creativity and private entrepreneurship and self-help can flourish." The "centerpiece" is a twelve-year exemption from tariffs on exports to the U.S., the first such trading advantage to be given to any region. Although 87% of U.S. imports from the basin are already duty-free, Reagan hopes that extending free trade will...
...tragedy is that the President's ideological rigidity seems certain toe choke off the promising long-term features of his new Caribbean policy. For the next 12 years, almost all basin exports to the United States will be duty-free; as a result, most experts agree, the President's initiative will likely stimulate the creation of many new products. And by calling for increased technology transfers and the teaching of marketing strategies. Reagan just might insure the region's future competitively in agriculture and industry. Additional U.S. financial assistance will probably bail out countries like Honduras and Costa Rica, enabling...
...Mexican President Lopez Portillo has declared he will not participate in any plan that excludes Nicaragua and Cuba--which is precisely what the Reagan program does. But without the support of Lopez Portillo--who is trusted by Reagan and Caribbean leftists alike, a rare combination--any initiative in the basin has only a dim chance of success. And cutting off Nicaragua will only increase the Sandinistas' reliance on the Soviet Union...
...professor argued forcefully that the Administration is wrongly straddling the fence in the Caribbean. "Some government officials." Jorge Dominguez said, "clearly care about Central America and its economic and social well-being. Others don't give a damn, they just want to prove an ideological point." The new Caribbean Basin plan reflects this ambivalence. But the peoples of the Caribbean will not trust such a two-faced approach and rightly not. If the United States is to have any positive influence in the basin, it must end its ideological posturing...