Trade Conference Expectations Sag
MIAMI — Billed as an effort to form the world's biggest common market and secure prosperity for the Western Hemisphere, the Free Trade Area of the Americas pact is looking more like The Incredible Shrinking Treaty.
Fearful of acrimony and failure at a summit here this week, negotiators from 34 member countries have stripped out controversial elements, from farm subsidies to commitments to honor intellectual property rights. It is widely assumed that a final agreement to put all countries in the region except Cuba under a single trade regime will not be as comprehensive as many negotiators had once hoped.
What is emerging is a design-your-own menu of trade practices rather than a binding program for reducing tariffs and removing barriers to investment.
Plans call for a draft treaty to come into force within 14 months, but more than 5,000 blanks remain in the blueprint for creating a common market that would encompass 800 million people.
The Brazilian co-chairman of the Miami summit, Adhemar Bahadian, told reporters that negotiators "don't have to reach an agreement" here on disputed subjects such as subsidies, copyright and opening government contracts to foreign bidders. His words signaled lowered expectations for the summit, which runs through Friday, and a recognition that heated debate would only divide the conference delegates, thwarting a declaration of objectives for future sessions.
That happened with the World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in September, when Brazil led a group of about 20 developing countries in a revolt against perceived bullying by the United States, especially on agricultural subsidies. The WTO meeting broke up without an agreement or instructions on how to proceed toward a global trade forum.
"There's the danger of what happened in Cancun happening here anyway," said Dennis Olson, a delegate from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a Minneapolis-based group that focuses on protecting rural communities and the environment. "If the United States doesn't start negotiating [on farm subsidies], other countries will decide the United States is demanding the right to dump in their markets while preaching to them about benefits of free trade."
Several of Brazil's allies from the Cancun summit have begun direct trade negotiations with the United States, securing considerations on an individual basis that the FTAA's biggest member is loath to grant the whole region.
