Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL) | By Doreen Hemlock | August 25, 2003
With just three months to go before Miami hosts a historic Americas trade ministers' meeting, organizers say they're on track to raise at least $10 million to fund the event -- much of it for security to handle as many as 6,000 delegates and 100,000 protesters expected to attend.
Companies in South Florida already have committed $1.3 million of roughly $2 million sought from the private sector. Florida has approved $1 million in state funds, and Congress is to consider a bill in September allocating $7 million in federal funds, said Jorge L. Arrizurieta, who runs Florida FTAA Inc., a nonprofit group helping to prepare the event.
The Nov. 17-21 meetings will bring together business groups and trade ministers from all 34 nations in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean except Cuba to discuss U.S.-led plans to forge an ambitious Free Trade Area of the Americas pact, or FTAA, by 2005.
Tens of thousands of people are expected to protest, seeking greater participation for labor, environmental and other groups in the talks and also rejecting what they call trade rules written "by corporations, for corporations."
Financing is key because organizers want to head off the kind of violence and vandalism that hit Seattle during World Trade Organization talks in 1999. More than 500 of about 50,000 protesters were arrested, and damage topped $2 million then. The U.S. General Accounting Office has linked Seattle's problems largely to inadequate funding and planning, especially for security needs.
"We're confident we'll be fully prepared," said former U.S. ambassador Luis Lauredo, the Miami event organizer who also coordinated the presidential Summit of the Americas in Miami in 1994.
News of fund-raising progress coincides with a full-day seminar in Miami todayto review the status of FTAA talks. Negotiations among the nations have bogged down recently because of discord over Washington's hefty subsidies on U.S. farm products, plus irritation over the White House's go-it-alone attitudes on Iraq and other international issues.
Many analysts say it now appears unlikely the Bush administration can achieve a far-reaching FTAA by 2005 and may have to settle initially for a framework, or what some have dubbed "FTAA Lite."
The outcome hinges in large measure on accords with Brazil, the largest country in Latin America and one that competes worldwide with some sensitive products Washington heavily protects in the U.S. market, including citrus, soy, sugar and steel.
"Brazil has the whip hand on whether there will be an FTAA," said Carl Cira, who heads an Americas think tank at Florida International University and is a coordinator of today's seminar.
"And Brazil's been saying the FTAA as currently conceived won't fly because the U.S. is unable to make any meaningful concessions on agriculture," such as ending its nearly 30-cents-a-gallon tariff on orange-juice imports, Cira said.
Critics of free trade also are busy organizing for November, holding teach-ins and even preparing a bicycle caravan from North Carolina to Miami to join delegations from throughout the Americas, said South Floridians for Fair Trade and Global Justice, a coalition of mainly labor and environmental groups.
The protesters plan concerts, parades and panels in Miami mid-November to raise awareness on the far-reaching effects of trade on wages, prices, working conditions and the environment.
They also want to share ways that consumers can make their concerns known, from contacting their lawmakers to buying "fair-trade coffee" that pays more to farmers and less to middlemen, activists said.
"The North American Free Trade Agreement had draconian rules that put corporations first," said Pedro Monteiro of environmental group Sierra Club in Broward County, referring to the U.S.-Canada-Mexico-pact. "And we think the FTAA will be NAFTA on steroids."
South Florida has perhaps the most at stake of any U.S. area in the FTAA debate. It already handles the bulk of U.S. exports to South and Central America and the Caribbean, and it hosts the largest concentration of Latin American corporate headquarters in the United States, more than 400, from Microsoft to Citibank.
If the FTAA slashes trade barriers and business grows, South Florida ports and seaports stand to gain, as would service companies that handle international transport, legal work or advertising.
Furthermore, Miami is vying to host the FTAA headquarters, a designation that could bring jobs, tourism and prestige, much as Brussels has gained as hub for the European Union.
If mid-November events go smoothly, Miami should improve its chances of hosting the headquarters against rivals in Atlanta and cities in Mexico, Trinidad and Panama, said Arrizurieta, of the nonprofit Florida FTAA.
Names of companies helping fund November events have not been released, but companies helping Miami's FTAA headquarters bid include FedEx, UPS, IBM, BellSouth and Ryder, plus law firms Greenberg Traurig and White & Case.
Doreen Hemlock can be reached at dhemlock@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5009. FTAA AT A GLANCE What: The Free Trade Area of the Americas would be the world's largest free-trade zone, encompassing 800 million people from Alaska to Argentina. It would expand on the North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Who: 34 nations in the Americas (all but Cuba).
When: Proposed for 2005, after a decade of negotiations.
Where: The headquarters site is up for grabs. Miami is vying against Atlanta; Puebla, Mexico; Port-of-Spain, Trinidad; and Panama City, Panama.
Why: Proponents say FTAA will boost economic growth, trim poverty, and make governments more accountable. Critics say big nations will swamp the small, and multi-national corporations will win.Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL):
