Do Hollywood Liberals Really Care About Haiti?

First, if you can, please donate to Haiti. The people of Haiti need your support.

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Watching George Clonney's 'Hope for Haiti' fundraising benefit concert - a noble night - I could not help but remember that most of the people taking part in the event are Hollywood liberals who are fiercely opposed to such "evil" capitalist ideas like free trade - which is often disparaged as a neo-colonial venture intended to subject the 'Third World' to Western multinationals instead of - when actuated by the rules of the free market - being a tool in which to lift billions of people out of poverty.

Haiti is poor in part because of the lack of free trade between the United States and Haiti.

It is frustrating that nobody in the U.S. press is noting that one of the main reasons Haiti is poor is because Congress imposes sugar tariffs that prevent Haitians from selling their paramount crop to the U.S. market. The tariff is lobbied for by 11,000 powerful American sugar farmers (mostly in Florida just 90miles off the coast of Haiti) who do not want foreign competition. They make campaign contributions every election year and the tariff stays put which means Haitians are denied the ability to trade and making a decent living (they stay poor or turn to drug smuggling) and Americans have the benefit of paying 3x the world price for sugar, which then, of course, inflates the price for everything that goes into sugar. This is why American candy makers have relocated to Mexico where they can import Haitian sugar into their factories.

Instead of removing the tariff, a good all-around - Haitians, American workers, American consumers, the drug war - the U.S. media and the government self-righteously pretend that America is so noble because it is giving Haiti aid while preventing Haitians from trade all for purpose of campaign contributions.

If the Hollywood liberals appearing on 'Hope for Haiti' really cared for the Haitian people then they'd care enough to see Haitians move beyond handouts and become productive and self-sufficient people with honor and with tariff and quote free access to the U.S. market.

Real change in this world is not a benefit concert where we see nice pictures, donate some money, feel better about ourselves and then move on with our lives. Does anyone think that the chronic poverty in Haiti will be ended due to a concert? A concert is well-meaning and does some immediate and much-needed good, but it is often the easy way because it costs too little time and money. Would Americans stand up to corrupt farmers? Not that would take real effort.

Alas, I do not think that will happen. Americans will soon move on and forget about Haiti, and Haitians will stay poor and be denied access to the American market.

Real support for Haiti is to take a stand in favor of free trade. That is doing something meaningful in the long run, something that will limit the tragedy the next time (if) an earthquake comes around. That is the concrete change in the world, not the 'change' in the form of a Hollywood telethon.