EVERY TIME the Big Brains in Washington perceive that their Latin American policies are collapsing, they look around frantically for a new gimmick. By bringing on ever newer shows, they hope to distract the public mind from the failure of their last economic or political monstrosity.

Washington’s latest gimmick for Latin America is a highly regulated Common Market—or "economic integration," as Walt W. Rostow likes to call it. Now that the Alliance for Progress is in a tailspin, a Latin American Common Market has been charted as the new course to good times in South and Central America. President Johnson was even pressed into the act to bray loudly for economic integration on the anniversary of the Alliance for Progress. The United Nations, where Latin American policies are directed by Antonio Mayobre, The Venezuelan Communist, has become the sounding board for such Common Market propaganda.

Of course, one catch in the Common Market proposal is that it is an opening wedge to the destruction of nationalism in the Americas. They don't emphasize it today, but the most vociferous Latin American advocates of the Common Market have their faces turned toward the "One World" dream of the political, as well as economic, integration of South America. Eduardo Frei of Chile and Raul Prebitsch of Argentina (and the United Nations) are Pied Pipers for the "One World." They contemplate a Hemisphere with a single managerial economic direction—the dream of the Communists. With the help of such Washington confusionists as Walt Rostow, Jack Javits, and Bobby Kennedy, they are trying to whoop through economic integration before the American public realizes what is being done.

It is not free trade which is being sought but an opportunity to further regulate the economy of Latin America through an economic superstate.

Is this in the interest of the United States? The most superficial glance at the proposal shows that it is not. The United States is the principal importer of Latin American commodities. Any program which, as this one does, depends upon price-fixing or quota allotments strikes directly at the American consumer. The American public would be gouged to lift the price of Latin American products by limiting Latin American production—a process which neither relieves want, nor expands output, nor increases the real wages of the workers. The sheer brazeness of the proposal is highlighted by the fact that through the Inter-American Development Bank, the Import-Export Bank, the World Bank, and through private investment, the United States is already pouring billions into the Americas to bolster economies there. The new scheme would greatly reduce the production return on these investments. Wealth lies only in greater production. Stability, increased investment in capital goods, and expanded production are the only keys to a bright future in Latin America. What we are now seeking to do can only thwart Latin American growth by holding down production and at the same time raise the prices we must pay for the artificially limited supply. We will thus be put in the position of paying off in handouts for the economic misery which our proposed production controls create. No one gains but the Communists who celebrate our stupidity.

The surrender which the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations have made on coffee is a portent. The United States, with its importation of three billion pounds of coffee per year, consumes more than half the coffee exported throughout the world. We are the primary customer of such coffee-raising areas as Brazil, Colombia, and Central America. Yet, in a reckless moment, President Kennedy committed us to an International Coffee Agreement, designed to raise world coffee prices by reducing production. After some balking by Congress, the Senate at President Kennedy's urging ratified the treaty in 1963. What has been the consequence? During the first thirteen months of the Agreement, retail coffee prices in the United States soared from an average of seventy cents a pound to eighty-five cents. Since every rise of one cent in the price of coffee costs American consumers $31 million, the total cost of our support of this cartel has already mulcted the American consumer of hundreds of millions of dollars. We have involuntarily taxed the American people for the benefit of an international cartel; we have limited Latin American production to raise the cost of our own imports.

Of course, this is neither good business, nor is it good Americanism. And yet we are being urged, by such theorists as Walt Rostow and Professor Prebitsch, to embark upon a Hemisphere-wide plan of economic integration which would repeat the price-fixing follies of the Coffee Agreement on a massive scale. In the whole discussion of economic integration, there is not the slightest mention of the interests of the United States. The plan is focused upon bolstering the interest of international manipulators. And at our expense.

Frei's Copper Plans For Chile