Charles Shapiro

Former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela on free trade

Charles Shapiro served as U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela from 2002 to 2004. He now heads a State Department task force on free trade agreements. During a recent visit to Harvard, Shapiro sat down with the HPR to discuss a variety of topics in U.S.-Latin American relations.
Harvard Political Review: Can we expect a warming of relations between Venezuela and the United States during and after the transition to an Obama Administration?
Charles Shapiro: There are rumors in Caracas that the government will make some sort of gesture to the United States to try to get things off on the right foot with the new administration. Certainly we would love to see relations improve with Venezuela. But in many ways it ís up to them. They’ve got to figure out what it is they want to do and where they want to go. One thing to keep in mind is that there are regional elections in Venezuela on Nov. 23, elections of every governor and every mayor in the country. In a recent speech, you know, President Chavez said that if a particular candidate for the opposition wins in a particular state, he’d send tanks into that state. That’s not the way to treat relations with any government in the United States.
A new administration gives you a chance to start off anew, which is terrific. But while administrations change, our national interests are pretty constant for any country. What we want to see is representative democracy with open economies be successful in Latin America by delivering to their citizens the benefit not just of good government, but also of good governance.
HPR: Do you think it is possible to see a more integrated Latin America, from an economic standpoint, especially in light of the worldwide financial crisis?
CS: I don’t know. One thing that is interesting is that trade within MERCOSUR [the Latin American regional trade agreement] as a percentage of the overall trade of the members of MERCOSUR is actually dropping. We’ve seen the Andean community fall apart. The Europeans announced yesterday that they’re initiating discussions of a trade agreement with Colombia and Peru without Bolivia and Ecuador.
I know that everybody in Latin America has this dream in their heart that there be greater Latin American integration. And that ís terrific, but Latin American politicians and Latin American presidents are pragmatic and they’re going to take advantage of opportunities that are there, whether it means trading more with Europe or trading more with China or trading more with South Korea. I think people will continue to talk about the goal of Latin American integration, but in politics the pragmatic tends to trump the idealistic.
HPR: To what extent could a new administration modify or roll back current free trade agreements, like NAFTA, if it wanted to?
CS: That great economic commentator, Ben Stein, said recently in the Sunday New York Times that [rolling back NAFTA] would be like trying to get toothpaste back inside the tube. U.S. trade with Mexico since 1994 has skyrocketed in both directions. How could you change it? Would you want to change it? Obviously the new administration could do what they want to do, but it would be very sensitive with our trading partners, and very hard to do. I can’t speak for the new administration—I don’t know what they’ve got in mind—but one thing I can tell you is that among the American public, “trade” has become a bad word. But we are exporting more, and it strikes me that if you want people to be more prosperous, one way to do it is for them to export more.
Let me say this, too: our academic institutions, our think tanks, and the U.S. government have done a terrible job of explaining trade to ordinary American citizens, in educating our citizens about trade. Part of the problem is that when we talk about trade we end up sounding like bankers in about 15 seconds, and you see people’s eyes glaze over as we start talking about GDP per capita and FDI and GE coefficients and all this kind of stuff that political scientists and economists and bankers love to talk about. We need to find a way to talk about trade so that your Mom’s next-door neighbor understands that it is good for both trading partners.