FTAA deadline in jeopardy

Efforts to revive the stalled negotiations for a Free Trade Area of the Americas failed for the third time in two months last week, jeopardising the year-end deadline for completing an agreement for a 34-nation trading bloc. In a sign of deepening discord, regional trade officials ended informal talks in Buenos Aires without agreeing on a date for the next round of negotiations. Progress on fleshing out the details of blueprint for free trade that was worked out in November in Miami has been slow.

Deputy trade ministers were at an impasse after the 17th round of the Trade Negotiating Committee in Puebla, Mexico, in early February. A mini-meeting in Buenos Aires in early March also ended without agreement but with a pledge to reconvene all the deputy trade ministers in Puebla between April 22-23. Now that meeting has been pushed into the future, possibly some time in May. “Further progress is necessary before resuming the 17th meeting of the TNC,” said a statement from the US and Brazilian co-chairs of the informal Buenos Aires talks. “Obviously we would have liked to have completed our work at this meeting,” said Deputy US Trade Representative Peter Allgeier in a conference call with reporters. “It is proving more difficult.” The latest stalemate prompted questions about how negotiators could meet the talks deadline. “They can’t,” said Peter Morici, a University of Maryland business professor who was involved with the North American Free Trade Agreement and ratification of the World Trade Organisation.

Morici said the framework thrashed out during the Miami meeting has proved to be “unworkable,” especially in the light of the upcoming presidential election in the United States and Brazil’s reluctance to open its markets to industrial imports. “Given the deep deadlock between blocs of countries with opposing views of what an FTAA should be, it is amazing that the Bush administration still insists that the FTAA is alive,” said Lori Wallach, a free-trade opponent and director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch in Washington. “Pull the plug on the comatose FTAA and start over with rules aimed at pulling up wages and environmental and consumer standards in the hemisphere,” Wallach said in a statement.

The top US trade negotiator acknowledged the difficulties in setting the ground rules for talks, but Allgeier said it was up to trade ministers to alter the deadline if it proves unworkable. “The timetable of completing these negotiations by (January) 2005 is one that has been set by our leaders and reaffirmed by our ministers,” said Allgeier. “We have to work within this framework unless there is some change.” Negotiators from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Chile, the four South American Mercosur countries — Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay — and Ecuador met Wednesday and Thursday in the Argentine capital in hopes of ending a deadlock over agriculture and market access for other products, among other issues.

The Mercosur countries are demanding an end to US price supports and other farm subsidies, political hot potatoes even in a non-election year. Brazil, on the other hand, has dug in its heels over broadening legal rights of foreign corporations in Brazil and access to services and government contracts. With the Twin Towers in the background, people make their way to work in downtown Port-of-Spain. Trinidad and Tobago is bidding to have the FTAA headquarters here.