The original breakthrough apparently occurred in 2003 in the U.S. National Security Council, where reason (the need to improve security for a United States economically integrated with its two neighbours) prevailed over passion (anger with Canada and Mexico for not supporting the Iraq war). After a long gestation in the three capitals, the SPP agreement was signed a year ago in Waco, Texas. In June, a large trilingual document was published outlining dozens of specific measures to be negotiated and implemented by government officials within defined time lines.
Seen from Los Pinos, Mexico’s presidential compound, U.S. border concerns can be more an opportunity than a threat, now that U.S. security is inseparable from Mexican commerce. Within the Fox administration, leading officials see ASPAN as an urgently needed means to lock in a strengthened NAFTA so it cannot be rolled back by future governments.
When Congress passed a tough bioterrorism law, Mexican legislators called for retaliatory legislation to block exports of U.S. goods at the border. But Mr. Fox’s officials decided the better part of valour was compliance. Faced with the tough new U.S. requirements, these officials worked intensively with Mexican food exporters’ associations to help them adapt certification and packaging to conform to Washington’s new specifications. This effort climaxed last December when the bioterrorism law came into effect and no Mexican produce was blocked at the border for non-compliance.
It was a defining moment for the Fox administration, which has drawn a double conclusion that also resonates in Ottawa: On the one hand, accept the Americans’ security imperative as the paradigm within which the continental periphery has to operate; on the other hand, use co-operation on security to get inside the U.S. policy loop by negotiating the regulatory corollaries that apply to trade.
According to Mexican agricultural officials, during NAFTA negotiations, Washington had refused to bind the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which had long been a “black box” whose arbitrary rulings could block the entry of food products coming from Mexico. Thanks to the ASPAN talks, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office prevailed on the FDA to specify, for the first time, the certification standards governing Mexican food imports. If Mexican avocados are no longer vulnerable to unilateral FDA rulings, the Fox administration feels it has gained a vital competitive advantage over rivals in Latin America, Asia, even Europe.
This week, officials were polishing reports they will deliver in Cancun on such obscure issues as facilitating documentation for trans-border flights of private aircraft. It is a far cry from the more visionary ideas of a security perimeter or a customs union many in the business community are advocating for North America. But, as a result of this bureaucratic bustle, we can expect the meetings today and tomorrow will endorse a myriad incremental changes leading implicitly toward the same objectives.
Nevertheless, a triple spectre of uncertainty will loom over Cancun’s glistening beaches when the three politically weakened participants gather for their palaver:
George Bush gets lamer every day as demonstrators protest across the South against conservative Republicans’ attempts to criminalize undocumented Mexican immigrants;
Stephen Harper could be out of his new job even before the U.S. President gives his final, mission-accomplished salute from Pennsylvania Avenue;
Vicente Fox is not only in the last months of his six-year mandate, but polls consistently predict his successor will be the populist Lopez Obrador, who has strongly criticized NAFTA, but whose position on ASPAN remains unknown.
So, while this week’s summiteers will undoubtedly claim to have reconciled security for the U.S. with prosperity for its neighbours, it is also possible tri-national solidarity will soon be under huge strain.
This, then, is the high-stakes, tri-national game that the Mexicans call ASPAN, the American and Canadian governments call SPP, but we could call North American roulette. It’s a my-way-or-the-highway attempt by the three countries’ executive branches to forge — behind closed doors — a regulatory regime standardized along U.S.-defined lines for the continent.
With no involvement by the three legislative systems, and with minimal publicity to forestall the civil-society resistance that almost stopped NAFTA before it started, this summit’s camaraderie will not ensure its results from another Cancun peril — storm damage.
Stephen Clarkson is a political economy professor at the University of Toronto; Maria Teresa Gutiérrez Haces is a political economist at the Institute for Economic Research at the Autonomous National University of Mexico, and Blanca Martínez Lopez is a policy analyst in Mexico City
Reference the SPP here.