EDITORIAL: Involve public in free trade deal talks with US

Almost six months since Kenya announced its intention to negotiate a free trade agreement (FTA) with the US, the government continues to hold its cards close to its chest. Last week, President Uhuru Kenyatta came out strongly in defence of the FTA, saying Kenya’s team will seize every opportunity to protect sensitive industries at home while safeguarding Africa’s economic integration.

And to its credit, Nairobi has informed all its partners in Africa of its intention to pursue the FTA, assuring them that the bilateral pact will respect every clause of their integration treaties.

But that’s probably how far the government has gone to assuage the anxieties that have been building up from January when the news of an intended FTA with the world’s superpower was first made public. Kenya’s team is yet to make public its negotiation objectives.

Lest we forget, the US is no ordinary party. Its experience in negotiating trade treaties spans several centuries. Most of the bilateral pacts that it considers successful are those that are skewed in its favour.

And perhaps driven by his ‘America First’ policy, President Donald Trump has used his first term in office to dismantle pacts that compel the US to give something away in reciprocation. In the case of FTA, a set of negotiation objectives that the US published in May make no secret about Washington’s desire to access nearly all segments of the local economy, including protected ones.

Granted, Kenya has over the years traded with US under preferential terms, and the last of pacts under the African Growth Opportunity Act (Agoa) is set to expire in 2025. But the FTA is meant to be a different ball game. While the preferential Agoa has been US’s policy tool for encouraging exports from poor countries to its market since 2000, the FTA is meant to be a reciprocal framework.

In other words, Kenya will be compelled to give something back for everything its takes from the US.

That’s why we take this early opportunity to ask the State to involve the public at every stage of the FTA negotiation. A key starting point would be to publish Kenya’s negotiation objectives and allow citizens to submit their views before the select team locks itself for actual talks.