Our enemy in Ecuador wants a hand out

Investor's Business Daily:

Should the U.S. offer preferential trade privileges to hostile anti-American regimes that view them as cheap handouts? Offering nothing in return, Ecuador thinks so. We are less sure.

Ecuador's sudden charm offensive in Washington as it seeks to renew preferential trade privileges under the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act, or ATPDEA, ought to leave the U.S. queasy.

Here's a leftist regime in Quito that's done nothing but condemn free trade and hurl abuse at the U.S. as it rolls toward Cuban- and Venezuelan-style tyranny.

But for now it has a big smile on its face as it holds its hand out for an extension. Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa made the rounds in Washington this month, showing how opportunistic leaders leverage their alliances with Hugo Chavez to get goodies from the U.S. But it's not about the give-and-take of trade. It's to berate the U.S. to gain one-sided trade privileges.

This represents a dilemma for the U.S., which no doubt wants to help Ecuador's private sector with access to markets. But once given, the U.S. knows Ecuador's government is likely to emulate Chavez and destroy its private sector anyway.

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa knows, of course, that $5.7 billion in U.S. trade and 350,000 Ecuadorean jobs are at stake if existing trade privileges are not renewed after their June 30 expiration.

But instead of seeking to sign a permanent free trade pact — as Ecuador's neighbors Peru and Colombia did, putting in serious free-market reforms in exchange for permanent access to the world's biggest market — Correa prefers the current situation.

It lets Ecuador sell goods to the U.S. duty-free but doesn't give the same market access to U.S. firms in Ecuador. Correa denounces free trade as "yanqui imperialism" and wants the one-way trade privileges for another five years.

And if we don't? Then Correa vows to sic a wave of illegal immigrants on us, something to add to Ecuador's 350,000 illegals already here as of 2004, according to a U.S. Navy study.

Even as Ecuador calls for U.S. trade privileges, it has seized vast American oil interests like Occidental Petroleum's $1 billion operation last year, signaling how American investors can expect to be treated. Correa recently invited Hollywood actresses Trudie Styler and Daryl Hannah to Ecuador to denounce Chevron's operations there as "genocidal."

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These people are poor because they are not very smart and their embrace of Chavez is further proof of a lack of intelligence. They are embracing policies that will only make them poorer and will make investment in their poor economy less likely by legitimate business enterprises. It is unfortunate for the people of Ecuador, but like the Palestinians they chose poorly when they elected these guys and they will have to suffer the consequences. There is no need to subsidize stupidity.