Uruguay

The March 6th newspapers noted that USA President Bush will soon leave for a week long trip to Latin America which includes stops in - Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico. One chart I reviewed noted the country presidents that President Bush will meet and the "key issues" they planned to discuss.

Of these five nations "Uruguay" caught my attention since the lone "key issue" for discussion was noted as "Uruguay's desire to expand trade with the USA". For an overview of Uruguay please visit --

https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/uy.html

Were I advising President Bush (we can only hope that happens one day!!) I would tell him to make the Uruguay meeting a 5 minute conversation at the most by simply telling President Tabare Vazquez, "our markets are wide open to you and all tariff and non-tariff barriers are eliminated so let's get some trading going today..................." -- quite some diplomatic language huh?

Now that is efficient but why such open/free trade with Uruguay?

• Free trade benefits all consumers and only hurts government regulators
• Uruguay's Gross Domestic Produce (GDP) is only $37 billion versus the USA's GDP of $13 TRILLION, yes that is "TRILLION" not "billion" so our economy completely overshadows Uruguay's so Ross Perot and Lou Dobbs can just relax for once!!
• Having a full-blown, wide open trading partner in Latin America like Uruguay would help us establish a "beach head" to improve economic relationships across the continent to counter devout socialists like President/Dictator Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

Enough of the meetings and press conferences -- let's sign a deal with Uruguay this week.

Trade not press releases,

Todd