US hopes for FTAA take a blow

Hopes of reaching agreement on a Free Trade Area of the 
Americas (FTAA) took a nosedive at an emergency meeting in Buenos 
Aires from March 31 to April 1. Negotiations due to be held later 
this month have been cancelled and the January 1, 2005 deadline 
looks less likely by the day.

The FTAA is an attempt to expand the existing North American Free 
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) (US, Canada & Mexico) to encompass all 35 
countries (775 million people) within the Americas, with the 
exception of Cuba.

"Ten years of NAFTA's negative real-life effects have made it 
politically impossible for most countries to sign up for an FTAA-
NAFTA expansion", said Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen's 
Global Trade Watch.

"It's time to bury the failed NAFTA model, 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."

During last few years there have been some significant changes in 
government in a number of countries including Brazil and 
Venezuela.

"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. Clearly the 
Bush administration view of the FTAA as a full NAFTA expansion 
has been rejected. And as support drops among the US public for 
trade policies like the FTAA, which promote a race to the bottom 
in living standards and the environment, it becomes increasingly 
clear that US negotiators are not representing the American 
people", said Lori Wallach.

Trade negotiators from nine countries of the proposed 34-nation 
FTAA gathered at the Buenos Aires meeting on March 31 and April 
1. The goal of this meeting was to resolve several key deadlocks 
and build consensus about a common set of FTAA obligations that 
countries could approve at a planned April Vice Ministerial Trade 
Negotiating Committee (TNC) in Puebla, Mexico.

They failed to agree. This is not the first such failure. In 
early February 2004 a TNC meeting in Puebla ended with acrimony 
and without agreement. Then in early March a meeting called to 
sort out the February TNC deadlock also failed to resolve the 
issues.

Just as at the World Trade Organisation, third world countries 
are finding strength in unity, and standing up to the US and its 
demands. The US remains determined to dictate the agenda and 
promote the interests of its corporate sector. But increasingly 
governments of the poorer nations are finding the necessary unity 
and strength to defend the interests of their people and their 
development and independence.