Reuters / By Gilbert Le Gras
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (Reuters) - Negotiators from 34 American nations trying to forge the world's largest free-trade zone locked horns Wednesday on anti-dumping rules and agricultural subsidies, diplomats said.
The proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) accord would create the globe's largest free-trade area, where more than 783 million people produced more than $11.4 trillion in goods and services in 1999, generating about $2.7 trillion in cross-border trade.
"There is a radical, extreme position by the United States on anti-dumping which is untenable under single undertaking (comprehensive) negotiations," said Brazil's chief trade negotiator, Jose Alfredo Graca Lima, adding that U.S. rules posed a barrier to his country's steel exports.
The U.S. position is that FTAA members should not be obliged to modify their domestic anti-dumping laws, he said. "Dumping" refers to the sale of subsidized goods in another country at prices below fair market value.
"Within a free trade agreement there should be no anti-dumping to start with so if you're not even willing to discuss it, then you have a problem," said Graca Lima, adding that the United States was "practically alone" on the issue.
U.S. FARM SUBSIDIES AT ISSUE
The United States was one of a handful of nations reluctant to start cutting agricultural subsidies, arguing the issue was up to the World Trade Organization to resolve.
An Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) study last year found U.S. subsidies had risen to 24 percent of gross farm receipts in 1999, up from 14 percent in 1997, despite deregulation of that sector in the mid-1990s.
"We have to deal with this here. We can't just wait for a multilateral round at the WTO," said Alfredo Ferrero, Peru's vice minister of integration and international trade.
Another diplomat said negotiators were drafting an inventory of public health and phytosanitary definitions all countries could agree upon as justifiable in import suspensions to ensure these concerns do not become nontariff barriers.
Canada, Chile, El Salvador and the United States want these talks to wrap up by 2003 so the deal comes into effect by Jan.1, 2005. But negotiators from the other nations insist on negotiating to 2005 to have the agreement in place by 2006.
"There's a positive atmosphere to seek a date. We want this done sooner than many others," said Eduardo Ayala Grimaldi, El Salvador's deputy economy minister.
U.S. officials signaled Wednesday they may abandon attempts to advance the agreement's deadline but Latin American diplomats said that would not be enough to clinch the deal.:
