FINALLY! Foreign trade seen as something good

A recent Gallup Poll shows that more Americans have a positive view of foreign trade than a negative one. (Americans Shift to More Positive View of Foreign Trade)

Fifty-seven percent view trade as “an opportunity for economic growth through increased U.S. exports,” while 35% see it as “a threat to the economy from foreign imports.” During the prior two years, Americans were evenly divided in their opinions about trade.

Why is this important?

In a globally connected world, international trade is the lifeblood of growth and development. And yet, so few people know anything how much international trade affects their individual lives.

There are the obvious connections, but few think about it:

• Imported goods from China at the local Wal-Mart
• All the Toyotas,Hondas, Hyundis, etc. on the road.

But there is also:

• Iconic American beer is owned by the Brazilian company AmBev
• The majority owner of Burger King is the Brazilian investment firm, 3G.
• Columbia Records and Columbia Pictures are owned by Sony, a Japanese company
• TomTom, the popular GPS firm is a Dutch company.
• And, FYI: Holland is the 3rd largest foreign investor in the U.S. at $217.1 billion

The list goes on and on.

And none of that, the treaties that allow for protection of American companies making sales overseas or allowing foreign companies to invest in the US, can happen without a fully functioning and staffed foreign service. To be clear, my wife is a career diplomat, but the foreign service also includes people from the Departments of Commerce, Agriculture, Justice, Labor, etc.

A country does not remain prosperous unless it finds new markets for its goods and services. As more countries develop — Brazil — they become competitors. It is in the  economic well-being of the United States and its companies to help impoverished countries develop strong democratic institutions and strong economies. Helping farmers in Honduras come out of poverty and ensure their children are educated means fewer illegal immigrants to the United States but more importantly future clients for American products.

That means foreign aid is an important factor in the economic well-being and security of the United States.

Unfortunately, foreign aid and the foreign affairs budget in general always seems to be the target of budget cutters.

Phil Plait — The Bad Astronomer — wrote about the budgeting cutting mania aimed at NASA. His complaint could be just as true for the foreign affairs budget.

[I]f you have a hard drive full of 4 Gb movie files, you don’t make room by deleting 100kB text files! You go after the big targets, which is far more efficient.

In the case of NASA, the space agency budget is just a little less than 1% of the federal budget.

In a survey in 2010, the Program for Public Consultation asked people to estimate how much of the federal budget goes to foreign aid. The average estimate was 21%. The average response for how much would be “appropriate” was 10 percent.

And the real number for foreign aid: About 0.5%

The real number for ALL non-military foreign affairs activities: About 1.5%.

Yep! That small amount accounts for all the salaries of all the U.S. diplomats and local employees in embassies around the world, the rent, maintenance and repairs for all embassies and consulates, all the costs for the State Department headquarters and related buildings in Washington, all the processing of passports, all the trade negotiations, all the Commerce Department assistance to American businesses looking to sell goods and services overseas, all the marketing of US agriculture goods to other countries and all the foreign aid that helps bring millions of people out of poverty.

Another way to look at it:

• The U.S. military spends more on its marching bands than the State Department pays for its diplomats.
• There are more soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen in marching bands than there are U.S. diplomats. 

So why is the foreign affairs budget always under attack? Basically it is because there is no constituency for foreign affairs. The State Department does not build factories in just about every congressional delegation (as does the Pentagon). So the only people who care about the budget are either so-called “budget hawks” or people involved in international affairs. And because the issues of foreign affairs do not fit on a bumper sticker, few people care until something bad happens.

And this all gets back to the Gallup survey on the value of foreign aid.

If more reporters opened their eyes, they could see how their local economies are dependent on international connections. Or how international events have a direct impact on local events.

It would help if the State Department would also encourage its people to step out and start explaining to the general public about why having a foreign service is important to the economic well-being of the United States. Yes, some do, but too many do not.

It would be nice to see more discussions taking place in high schools and local news outlets about the local-global connections.

And — most importantly — how the economic well-being of the United States depends on international affairs and international trade.

Face it, this ain’t the 1950′s any more. It ain’t the 1960′s or 1970′s. This is the 21st century and that means reaching across borders for goods, services and accommodations.

UPDATE: Yoani Sanchez heckled & praised in Brazilian congress

The latest in the Sanchez world trip has the blog writer and Cuban dissident showing that many in Brazil have not grown past the rhetoric of the Cold War.

[T]hose on the left hailing Cuba as a victim of U.S. aggression against communism while others praised Sanchez for fighting against political repression on the island.

“Mercenary, go to Disney,” shouted those opposed to her visit, repeating the Cuban government’s view that all dissidents on the island are on the payroll of its ideological archenemy, the United States.

At the same time others called out the Castro government as a dictatorship.

Cuban dissident blogger inflames splits in Brazil’s Congress

It is just as sad to see so many on the left in the Brazilian Congress fail to see reality and to get past the rhetoric of the Cold War as it is to see conservatives in the U.S. Congress also fail to get past the rhetoric of the Cold War.

Guess refusal to see facts is not limited to just one ideology.

Yoani Sanchez’s world tour starts with protests in Brazil

Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez was blocked from seeing a film that featured her by protesters supporting the Cuban government. According the AP reports in Brazil say the Cuban embassy in Brasilia was instrumental in helping organize the demonstrations.

Oddly enough those complaining about Sanchez — for pointing out the lack of freedom in Cuba — have the right to demonstrate against here because Brazil is a democracy that tolerates dissent. Too bad that Pres. Dilma Rouseff did not speak out against this violation of Sanchez’s right to speak. (There are also reports that help for the demonstrators came from the president’s office.) Rousseff was also quite about the Cuban government suppression and arrests of dissident bloggers during her visit to Cuba last year.

Sanchez was recently allowed to leave Cuba after the Raul Castro government changed its travel rules allowing people to now get passports without having to first pass a loyalty test.

She will move on to about a dozen other countries to talk with free speech/press organizations and supporters. In the United States she will visit the offices of Google and Twitter.

Sanchez regularly blogs at Generation Y.

Here’s hoping she gets the kind of coverage a brave person like her deserves in the U.S. media — and I mean the real press, not the right-wing blogs.

If help comes and no one reports it, did it happen?

Loads of news organizations are following the disastrous club fire in Santa Maria in Southern Brazil. How can there not be a lot of attention when more than 230 people are killed in one incident?

Notes of sympathy and offers of help flooded the national, state and local governments.

Brazil is doing a pretty good job taking care of the survivors. The medical care in Brazil is good and the doctors and nurses well-trained. But they were short of a drug needed to treat some of the survivors.

A medication, called Cyanokit is needed to treat victims who inhaled cyanide poison as a result of the fire. The Brazilian health ministry put out a request for the drug and got it.

From the U.S. military, specifically the Southern Command.

Southcom Speeds Medications to Brazil for Nightclub Victims

The above link comes from the Department of Defense Public Affairs Office. And who reported this bit of altruism form the U.S. military? Damn few!

Reuters and AFP picked it up but a quick Google search shows NO U.S. news organizations carried the story. (The AFP story was seen in a Malaysia newspaper.)

• AFP/The Malay Mail: US medication for fire victims lands in Brazil
• Reuters: U.S. rushing treatment for Brazil fire victims

Usually the U.S. military does a much better job publicizing its humanitarian work. The best example is the way SouthCom and the U.S. Navy 4th Fleet responded to the Haiti earthquake. (Military official: U.S. hospital ship in Haiti near capacity)

And then there are the numerous medical teams that go into remote areas of Central America to provide basic and intensive medical care to people who otherwise would not get ANY medical care. (I am going off to see one such operation this week.)

This is not a publicity space for the U.S. military, even though I think they often get a raw deal for their work in the Americas. (And yes, sometimes they deserve it for being tone-deaf in some issues. But by and large, the Pentagon understands the news media a lot better than the news media understand the military and they do a lot of really good work that helps a lot of people.a lot is because they are SOOO bad at doing publicity.)

The issue here is that no one in the United States is learning about the U.S. connection to help the fire victims. The medicine is made by a U.S. company (Pfizer) and it is being donated by the U.S. military.

There are so many local U.S. connections it is sad that not one U.S. news outlet picked up the connection.

• Maybe the newspaper where the medicine was made could have done a story about how a local company helped survivors of a fire more than 3,000 miles away.
• Or maybe some of the business journals could have picked up on the rare action of U.S. medicine coming into Brazil without having a 150 percent duty charged.
• Maybe a story could have been done on the unusual step taken by the Brazilian government to admit that it needed outside help, especially help from the U.S. military. (This is a BIG deal.) 

But what else can you expect from an industry that more and more has been withdrawing from the world, with the exception of war or natural disaster.

Hell, one major network can’t even read a map. Notice how it misplaced Sao Paulo  by about 2,000 miles! About the same distance between San Francisco and Washington, DC. (If you don’t see the error, look it up yourself. You can start with: Sao Paulo is a coastal city and the industrial capital of Brazil.)

Social Councils/Media Democratization: Diversion or Danger?

Seems bad ideas keep coming back under new names.

A while back at the height of his popularity and at the tail end of his administration, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, organized a meeting called the Conference on Communications. The official purpose, according to Lula, was to get all forms of media to be less negative about Brazil. He wanted to create a “social council” to monitor and audit news reports.

In his opening address to the conference Lula said media “excesses,” “lies,” fabrications, political involvement and “slander and abuse” were a problem for the country and he intended to address that problem by making the press more responsible through “social councils.” He then said (I can only assume with tongue in cheek) that he had “a sacred commitment to freedom of the press.”

The conference was filled were representatives from social movements, government unions and businessmen. Few media organizations attended because they saw the conference as an attempt to create a framework for censorship.

“The proposal to create a ‘social council’ to audit press content implies modifications to the Constitution which guarantees free initiative and freedom of expression,” said National Magazine Editors (Aner) president Roberto Muylaert. He added “social control sends shivers anywhere in the world because it is incompatible with freedom of expression and a free press.”

Eventually the plan went nowhere as President Dilma Rousseff didn’t just put the planned government-run social council idea on the back burner, she took it off the stove.

The idea of creating social councils, or people’s councils is not a new one and it is not an idea that goes away.

The latest incarnation comes from Honduran president Porfirio Lobo.

Honduras is plagued with ineffective courts, prosecutors and police. (And rulings from the courts gutting efforts to clean up the police.) The resulting lack of ability to change the in law enforcement community more quickly means that violent crimes continue at an alarming rate — 92 murders per 100,000 people, highest murder rate in the world.

AS expected, the violence and murders make up the daily fare for the countries newspapers — as they would in any place where the government does not control the media. The problem for Lobo is that these reports show a country in deep trouble. The other day, Lobo became fed up with these constant reminders of the violence in his country and proposed a solution that is a non-starter as far as the media are concerned.

In lashing out at the problems he is facing, Lobo called for a plebiscite on media democratization.

At a meeting with the Council of Minister where 2013 was declared the “National Year of Violence Prevention,” President Lobo proposed a ballot initiative for the elections in November to hold a plebiscite on the democratization of radio and television frequencies, according to La Prensa.

Critics of Lobo’s call within the journalism and civil society communities spoke out quickly.

Rodolfo Dumas, a member of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA):

“I was not surprised at all these statements, because just look at the critical situation the country is living in security, investment, labor, health, education and especially in financial matters to understand that sooner or later the government would resort to what I have called an arsenal of mass distraction because these actions simply divert attention.”

Jimmy Dacarett, member of the Civic Democratic Union:

“The intention of the President is to distract the attention of the Honduran people and the vital issues that really are hurting the government disaster they have done to date. “

Chance are this plebiscite idea will go nowhere. But it is something to keep an eye on.

Already the Honduran media are under siege from non-government forces. The growing strength of narcos and other gangs in the country (because of the weak — and corrupted — legal system) means they — not the government — are threatening journalists.

Already some journalists admit privately that their news organizations self censor stories rather than face the wrath of a local gang. Others say they pay a “war tax” to local gangs to ensure “nothing happens” to them or their news organization.

What Honduran journalists need is what the rest of Honduran society needs: a competent, corruption-free legal system. (And that gets into the whole debate of foreign aid projects designed to do just that and civil society development.) And to be fair to Lobo, he also wants these same things but he is trying to undo decades of problems in just a few years. It takes more than just the president wanting to make changes.