But there’s mixed reactions

Dionisia Tabureguci
If Pacific islands countries yearning for the revival of the United States/Pacific Islands Nations Joint Commercial Commission (JCC) believe for a moment they could get away with something closely resembling a free trade pact or a preferential trade agreement with the world’s largest market, they should think again.

It is a fact—and this is from someone familiar with the American political and economic minds and the JCC—the United States (US) “has virtually no commercial interest in the region, sorry to say.

“Strategic interests are handled up North with the compacts and down south by allowing Australia and New Zealand to represent them.

“The JCC was proposed as an afterthought by George Bush Senior as he felt that when he met with the Islands Leaders at a meeting in Honolulu in 1990, diplomatically he needed the islands to take something away from the meeting.”

The gentleman, who was reacting to a correspondence from ISLANDS BUSINESS suggesting the Pacific islands nations may fit into the US economic plan, is of the view the JCC “was a carrot to show the region the US was still interested, without anything substantive to be offered.”

To think therefore that the region can go pitching for something like a preferential arrangement, such as that of which the US grants African nations, under the Africa Growth Opportunity Act, is to think very big indeed.

What then, one may ask, is the use of the JCC to the region? It has been touted as the region’s best hope in establishing trade relations with the US, yet, if this is the reality of the US mindset towards it, one could well understand why in the past the collective efforts of individual countries and US diplomatic officials in the region to gain beneficial market access, had always been met with resistance.

As former US ambassador to Fiji, David Lyon, said last year on the reinvigoration of the JCC, “even when we were able to phrase our questions intelligently, we found it extremely difficult to get the needed attention from experts in Washington.”

The speech by Lyon was probably a reflection that behind the scenes, serious contemplation was being made about the JCC and its role in fostering closer US-Pacific trade ties.

Indeed a month before Lyon’s speech, JCC officials at the Pacific Islands Development Programme (PIDP)—the Hawai’i based JCC secretariat—had met in Honolulu to discuss ways of reviving JCC and take it to its full potential.

Their proposal, now known as the Draft Proposal on Ways to Reinvigorate the US/Pacific Islands Nations Joint Commercial Commission, was taken to the Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders two days later.

It could be gleaned from the meeting’s communiqué that the best way for countries in the region to get into the US market is to start very small, to first develop products and services that could be marketed and then collectively negotiate through the JCC secretariat for a trade framework that would allow for a competitive entry of these goods and services into the US market.

One important suggestion in this draft proposal was the “need to be very specific in focus—identifying a limited number of goods and services it (JCC) wishes to promote to the US and subsequently identifying policies needed to be put in place and/or barriers to be removed for this trade to be enhanced.”

To help achieve this, it was suggested that a closer working relation be forged between PIDP and the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat “to work out how best to cooperate in this task (of reviving the JCC) in light of their respective resources and expertise.”

What then has been the progress so far and could the JCC create inroads into US/Pacific trade relations?

Scott Kroeker, the JCC project officer based at PIDP, told ISLANDS BUSINESS that since the meeting last year, the proposal to reinvigorate the JCC was informally provided to the US State Department for its reaction and, so far, there has been no response.

Further, in October last year, “then chairman of the Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders (PICL—annual meeting of the 13 Pacific Islands nations that are signatory to the JCC), then Prime Minister of Tonga, Prince ‘Ulukalala Lavaka Ata, met with the United States’ Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Kathleen Stevens, to discuss Pacific islands affairs and PICL. As I understand it, he neglected to raise the issue of JCC.”

If this is a demonstration of a lack of coordination among higher authorities of this initiative, it is all the more reason to “start small” and take careful and sure steps before one could begin to rate the success or failure of JCC.

One challenge the Americans have also come to learn about the region is that there tends to be a lot of planning and discussions on things to be done while implementation is often very slow.

“The notion to ‘start small’ is a reflection of this experience and also to reinforce the notion that expecting the world from the US is unrealistic,” said Kroeker.

“Although I heard Lyon talked about the possibility that if Fiji had raised the garment issue through the JCC mechanism, something may have been done, I am highly suspicious of this. The objective is to find some small but symbolic victories the JCC can point to in an effort to build momentum and support from all fronts.”

These little victories, advised Kroeker, must be the ones that benefit the islands in order to create goodwill or desire on the part of the US to make future efforts.

“We need victories that actually increase trade to show that the JCC can be successful, even if on a limited scale and on a narrow set of issues,” he added.

Given the views of the JCC secretariat and the intention now to focus on a list of goods and services, the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat now becomes a crucial link between the islands and the JCC secretariat.

Dr Jim Gosselin, Regional Trade Policy Advisor of the Forum Secretariat, said it is necessary as time has shown, to give due consideration to the capacity constraints of Forum member countries when designing and implementing programmes.

It is also important to devise means to address these capacity constraints in order for any decisions taken to be effective.

“The likelihood of a JCC revival being successful will depend on the practicality of the solutions proposed and the ability to respond to the genuine needs and concerns of the Pacific Islands nations. That must be a priority,” he noted.

When this edition went to press, the working relationship mooted for the Forum Secretariat and PIDP was yet to be discussed by the two parties.

By the looks of things, there is still quite a distance to go yet before anyone gets there.