Brazilian Minister of Foreign Relations Luiz Felipe Lampreia said March 29 that he believed it was too soon to be committed to the concept of a Free Trade Area of the Americas without knowing what the political atmosphere would be in the United States in 2005 when talks are concluded.
"I think it is too soon to be committed to the idea [of the FTAA] without knowing exactly what the political environment will be when it comes before the U.S. Congress," he stated.
Lampreia made his comments at a forum organized by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Inter-American Dialogue, and the Brookings Institution.
Brazil has been accused by the United States and others of dragging its feet in the FTAA talks.
The FTAA was first envisioned at the 1994 Miami Summit of the Americas. The negotiations among the 34 Western Hemisphere democracies are scheduled to conclude by 2005.
While Brazil views the FTAA as a "potentially very attractive scheme," it recognizes that the FTAA could also impact Brazil negatively if it is concluded in an unbalanced way, Lampreia said.
The FTAA must provide "broad and unencumbered" preferential access to the U.S. market with no exceptions, Lampreia said. "We know this is not easy ... We are not naive about the situation," he added.
The next FTAA ministerial meeting is scheduled for April 2001 in Argentina. Lampreia said that he did not expect any "landmark" agreements before the talks concluded in 2005. "This is a comprehensive package which must be discussed at the end," he said, adding that Brazil was not looking for "early harvest" or "middle of the road" results.
Lampreia downplayed the significance of the current lack of fast-track negotiating authority in United States. Fast-track authority is a procedural device which protects trade agreements from congressional amendments once implementing legislation has been formally introduced. Fast track is considered essential to wrapping up multilateral negotiations, such as the FTAA.
The absence of fast track is not the most "relevant point" in the negotiations because this will likely change, he said. "I think the most important question is not whether there is fast track but whether the U.S. Congress ... will be prepared to approve and let the government negotiate an agreement that amounts to a virtual extension of the [North American Free Trade Agreement] to the whole region," he said. If faced with this question today, Lampreia said he said "little doubt" that the answer would be "a very clear no."
Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Richard Fisher, who also addressed the forum, conceded that it was impossible to predict what the political atmosphere would be in 2004. However, he stressed the need to continue moving toward the goal of the FTAA. "If we can't get Brazil excited about this, we're not going to do it," he remarked. Fisher said that the April 2001 ministerial could result in the adoption of a second set of measures aimed at facilitating business in the hemisphere.
Defending the openness of the U.S. economy, Fisher said that Brazil and the United States needed to work together as partners to address agricultural export subsidies provided by the European Union.
Lampreia said that about 80 Brazilian products face some sort of market restrictions in the United States. "I think this is a very serious cause for irritation ... that the United States, the global champion of free trade, resorts either to unilateral or discriminatory barriers" to exclude Brazilian products from its market, Lampreia said. Fisher said issues of access should be resolved in multilateral negotiations. He pointed out that imports from Brazil to the United States rose 10 percent last year.
Brazil is the 10th largest market for U.S. products and the number one destination for U.S. investment in the developing world, Lampreia noted.
By Rossella Brevetti
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