TPT May 2007

From the AmericaS

Of related interest . . . › President Hugo Chávez’s tightening control of the Venezuelan economy is having the doubtless unintended effect of promoting the flight of many of his wealthy countrymen to the United States, particularly Florida. According to the latest US Census, between 2000 – a year after Mr Chávez took office – and 2005, the number of Venezuelans living in the US doubled to about 160,000. Nearly half live in Florida. Venezuelans have had a long-time interest in Florida investment property, but the latest buyers are seeking houses and business properties that will help them earn the green card, the traditional preliminary to naturalized citizenship. And the Venezuelan influx is intensifying. According to the latest Department of Homeland Security statistics, in 2005, 10,645 Venezuelans received green cards allowing them to live in the US, almost double the total for 2004. By way of comparison, Colombia, with nearly twice Venezuela’s roughly 27 million residents, sent the same number that year. And of the thousands of Venezuelans who came to the US in 2005 on business and tourism visas, at least some are presumed to have stayed. › Latin Americans are not the only ones spotting value in American real estate. South Koreans spent $780 million on overseas real estate in 2006, 34 times more than in the previous year and almost half of it (48 per cent) in the United States. Canada drew 23 per cent and China 5.9 per cent of the outlay, according to the Central Bank of Korea.

Matters of trade A US administration with few trade-pact successes tries sweet talk with Congress The Democrats who last autumn prevailed over Congressional candidates from President George W Bush’s Republican party had campaigned against Mr Bush’s trade policies, and trade deals promoted by the administration seemed doomed in the new Congress. But in early March the administration and Republican lawmakers were making a fairly obvious effort to gain Democratic support for three pending trade deals: with Panama, Peru, and Colombia. “There’s no question that there’s been a change on the Republican side,” Rep Charles B Rangel, the New York Democrat who is chairman of the HouseWays andMeans Committee, said onMarch 5. “They refused to talk about these things before, and now they’re talking.” The sudden White House softening is readily explained by the eagerness of a lame-duck president for even the smallest foreign policy success. US efforts to reach a free-trade agreement with South America’s two biggest economic powers, Brazil and Argentina, are stalled, and Washington’s efforts to influence economic policies through the International Monetary Fund and its sister organisation, the World Bank, have diminished.

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M ay /J une 2007