NYT Blames Corporate America Not Corrupt Haitian Government for Poverty in Haiti

By Kevin Mooney, Times Watch: Apparently, corporate America is to blame for the widespread suffering and acute poverty in Haiti that has only intensified in the aftermath of a major earthquake. This is the central message of The New York Times hit piece on the Rawlings Sporting Goods company that left the island about 20 years ago; external factors unrelated to Haiti’s government are the culprit here, according to the article.

Baseballs are very specialized products that require a highly trained work force. If Rawlings had its druthers, it would have preferred to keep an already well-trained trained workforce in place, equipped to handle a unique product. Yet, the company felt compelled to uproot itself thanks to government corruption, mismanagement and poor public policy decisions. The Haitian government imposed severe regulations and restrictions that made for an untenable business climate, but this story is untold.

Rawlings now has a moral obligation to re-invest in Haiti because the company was profitable there at one time, even though it has no ownership over any of the policy decisions made in the past two decades. This argument is made by a book author quoted in the story who has studied assistance programs to Haiti.

“Do they have an obligation?” Josh DeWind, a co-author of “Aiding Migration: The Impact of International Development Assistance on Haiti,” said Tuesday in a telephone interview, referring to Rawlings. “I suppose they did quite well in Haiti, so, yes, in a humanitarian sense, it would be morally right to go back and help out, given that they benefited from Haiti.”

There’s also a sop to organized labor. “He [DeWind] added that the despot Jean-Claude Duvalier helped foster the low-cost business environment “by making sure there were no independent unions.”

There’s no talk about The New York Times re-locating any of its facilities down to Haiti. Even this article concedes that aside from the public relations appeal it makes little business sense to make massive investments in Haiti just now.

“Companies willing to invest there know it will take substantial time to rebuild the infrastructure, institutions and housing needed to make major investments pay off in a country plagued by extreme poverty and sky-high unemployment,” The Times acknowledges.

The message should be “Haiti Heal Thyself,” but it’s just easier to bash corporate America. Rawlings has been operating in Costa Rica since about 1988 in response the political unrest that accelerated throughout Haiti in the late 1980s and accelerated into the 1990s. This write-up is reflective of the long-standing antipathy The New York Times has toward business owners who are understandably reticent to operate in a climate where the rule of law is not observed.

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