Latinnews Daily | November 3, 2003 HEADLINE:
Brazil and the US have agreed to hold a meeting before the make-or-break Free Trade Area of the Americas summit on 20 and 21 November in Miami. The pre-meeting will take place in Washington on 7 and 8 November: Brazil will certainly be represented as will the US. A few other countries of the 34 invited to make up the FTAA will also be summoned.
Brazil and the US have very different visions for the FTAA. The US wants to open up Latin American markets without doing much to lower its agricultural subsidies or opening up domestic markets. Brazil says that Latin America should only open its markets for goods and services if the US reciprocates.
Ross Wilson, the US's chief FTAA negotiator, admitted that the US was unhappy with what happened at the last FTAA meeting, which was held at the level of senior officials, rather than ministers, in Port of Spain, Trinidad. He said that the US nevertheless believed that Brazil was still on course for an FTAA starting from 2005.
Celso Amorim, the Brazilian foreign minister, said that he was in favour of FTAA but only if it was the product of consensus and not imposed by the US. A former Brazilian President, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, has also weighed into the debate: he said that the US still had to develop a vision for Latin America. Everything it did was too stop-start, he said.
Brazil is showing signs of making concessions. Last week, Adhemar Bahadian, its chief negotiator, said that Brazil and Argentina had agreed a position on services which would be presented to the Miami summit. The Mercosul is also preparing a paper on investments. These are two issues of particular interest to the US.Latinnews Daily:
