ANDRES OPPENHEIMER Edwards bad news for Latin America

Likely Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry's naming of a protectionist zealot like Sen. John Edwards as his running mate last week was bad news for Latin America, which badly needs to increase its exports to the United States.
I just hope that Kerry will tell his vice-presidential pick the same things he told me in a recent interview.
When I asked Kerry in a June 26 television interview on Latin American affairs whether he is a protectionist, and whether the U.S. labor unions' support for him would push a Kerry administration to put new barriers on U.S. imports from Latin America, he denied it vehemently.
"I'm not a protectionist, but I'm fair," Kerry told me, trying to explain his calls for higher labor and environmental standards in future free-trade agreements. "I'm for trade. I have voted for all of our trade agreements so far, but I believe that we need to work together. I think it's in the interest of Latin American workers to make sure that the water they're drinking is clean, to make sure that the air they're breathing is clean, to make sure that as they work, their wages go up."
But as you know, senator, I said, a lot of Latin Americans fear that U.S. corporations and labor unions are using these apparently noble causes as excuses to protect inefficient American industries from foreign competition.
"No, no, no, no, no," Kerry responded emphatically. "I have a different way of doing it.
"See, this is where I'm different. Because I have to put these things in context, not of an American 'stop' effort, but of an American cooperative effort, where we're actually helping to transfer the technology, where we're actually helping provide the technical assistance, and where we worked together to try to raise standards for both of us."
When I looked at him with skepticism, Kerry tried a different approach.
"You have to look at where somebody is coming from in these proposals," he said. "I don't come from a place of ideology, or a place of negativity. I come from a place of cooperation, and to build stronger relationships, and to lift people up."
While insisting that he will pay much more attention to Latin America than the Bush administration, he added, "I think it's common sense that the workers of Latin America and the countries of Latin America can find reasonable, easily definable, clearly measurable steps that you take where you're both doing better."
I came out of the interview with Kerry pretty convinced that Kerry would most likely follow former President Bill Clinton's steps -- that he would be a labor-backed protectionist during the campaign, and a free trader if elected president. But Kerry's selection of Edwards last week makes me wonder.
Edwards' votes
Unlike Kerry, Edwards campaigned against the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, voted against a bill to expand trade with Caribbean, Central American and African countries in 2000, voted against the extension of the Andean trade preference bill in 2002, and against the U.S. free trade agreement with Chile in 2003.
Edwards has even bragged about his votes against free-trade deals with Latin American countries, while -- paradoxically -- voting for normalization of trade relations with China in 2000.
"I didn't vote for NAFTA," Edwards said in the Jan. 4 debate among Democratic Party candidates. "I campaigned against NAFTA, I voted against the Chilean free trade agreement, against the Caribbean trade agreement, against the Singapore agreement, against final passage of fast track for this president."
My conclusion: Edwards' record on trade is worrisome. It makes one wonder about the claim that a Kerry administration would be necessarily better for Latin America. How could it be better for Latin America if it were to curtail the region's exports to the world's biggest market?
One can only hope that the next time Edwards brags about his record of voting against Latin American trade, Kerry will stop him in his tracks with the same "No, no, no, no, no" -- five times in a row -- with which he almost jumped out of his chair when I asked him whether he was a protectionist.
X Andres Oppenheimer is a Latin America correspondent for the Miami Herald. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.