Yearwood. Thank you, Mr. Meeks. Thank you for your management on Caribbean concerns. I am going to tackle two concerns here primarily, and I will leave my coworkers to deal with a few of the others. I believe one of the essential issues that the Caribbean has is competitiveness. And I believe to make better use of U.S.- Caribbean trade arrangements a lot of the competitive issues need to be addressed - Which one of the following occupations best fits into the corporate area of finance?. I discussed in my statement that the IDP they are doing a great deal of deal with trade facilitation. That is going to be essential to getting the Caribbean more able to type of have single windows, decrease the expenses of transportation, and reduce the cost of clearance in moving goods.
Concerns such as traveling from one Caribbean island to the other can be more costly than going to Miami and after that going back down. So there are a lot of issues that the Caribbean needs to take on in order to end up being a more competitive place to do service and to trade more successfully. I didn't wish to, nevertheless, not take the chance to state something about Haiti. I did live there for 13 years and I do follow what is going on there really carefully. And I think it is extremely crucial that the HOPE expense not simply go to 2020, however go-- there has to be some sustainability to what is going to be successful the HOPE bill following 2020.
Parliament is unstable to say the least, kind of an interim President that may or might not constitutional. I am Helpful site not a Haitian constitutional professional, however I have concerns. However at this point Check over here in time, what Haiti needs more than anything else when this specific point of political problem is overcome, Haiti is going to need sustainability and stability to its relationship for trade and financial investment with the United States. So I think that is an important problem that the Congress requires to keep its eye on. Thank you. Mr. Meeks. Yes, sir. Mr. Farnsworth. If I could just reinforce what Sally just stated, the problem of competitiveness is real and we handle the business community all the time.
Therefore there has to remain in my view a particular attention to investment environment issues. Energy is part of that. It is certainly not the only aspect. I believe we likewise need to know unexpected consequences. And you have done some really great clearly on the trade program, Mr. Meeks. Plainly the TPP is something that Council of the Americas supports. We value your management and others of the subcommittee on that. However there are perhaps some unintended repercussions. And for example, when the North American Free Trade Arrangement was first passed one of the strongest supporters for something that became called NAFTA Parity was Ambassador Richard Bernal of Jamaica who came into the U.S.
It is a great thing, but we wish to make sure that Jamaica and the other Caribbean nations are not negatively affected by the trade and financial investment diversion that might go to Mexico as an outcome of NAFTA. I believe that was an extremely crucial point then and it is a really crucial point now. And to the extent that TPP goes forward, and again I hope that it does. I strongly support it and we hope that it Website link is a near term issue. Nevertheless, with some new entrants into textiles, for instance, and farming that are extremely competitive in the global environment that will impact countries in the Caribbean Basin.
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taxpayer assistance to which we support, but again the concern is among trade and investment diversion. We have to take care that doing the "ideal thing" with other economies we are not negatively affecting some economies which are already worried. And so what is the response here? I believe the answer is to return to the original concept in some method of NAFTA Parity just this is TPP parity, right? If Haiti, for example, is dependent on the textiles trade with the United States, we I think require to make certain that whatever we perform in TPP doesn't needlessly undermine that or doesn't create problems in a manner that would eliminate a few of those benefits that Congress has actually worked so hard throughout the years to establish.
So my point is that if we look at these in a more detailed method, in a way that where you have a lot of various, combination of different hairs, then I think we will come to a better location. And so as we are looking at these issues tactically, I just quite support the manner in which you are putting this in the context of it is not simply this issue or that concern or another concern, it is all of these together and how can we move on in a thorough integrated way in support of the Caribbean, and I think that is what we need to keep foremost in mind.
Bernal. Let me start by thanking you, Congressman Meeks, for your consistent management on Caribbean concerns. In reaction to the issue that you raise, I think that the onus is not only on the U.S (How to owner finance a home). however is on the Caribbean. We in the Caribbean have to do some things to make it simpler for company to operate and to become globally competitive. I stay persuaded that if we create the right sort of environment between the U.S. and the Caribbean that there is private sector initiative on investment and there are chances, extremely real opportunities which can happen by combining Caribbean and U.S.