The Miami Herald | By JANE BUSSEY | September 30, 2003
Brazil and the United States appear headed for a showdown over the scope of a proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, according to trade negotiators attending a preliminary meeting this week in the capital of Trinidad and Tobago.
Regional trade talks have been on a bumpy course for over a year, and experts have been talking about a scaled-back FTAA for months.
But in the wake of failed negotiations for a new round of global trade talks in the World Trade Organization, the Bush administration has taken a much frostier attitude toward Brazil's activist approach, which departs sharply from Washington's comprehensive and ambitious trade agenda.
''[The Brazilians] have been suggesting that the agenda is too crowded and too ambitious,'' said one regional trade negotiator, who asked not to be identified. ''The other countries have been saying we should stick to the agenda and schedule.''
The meeting of the Trade Negotiating Committee for the FTAA -- the last scheduled meeting before the November trade ministerial set for Miami -- is to open today in Port of Spain and end Thursday. The deputy trade ministers gathered on the Caribbean island this week are trying to establish the road map for the final phase of FTAA negotiations.
Trade ministers would be expected to ratify those guidelines, usually set out in the form of a final declaration, at the Miami summit to take place Nov. 20-21.
Trade negotiators at the Trinidad talks, who asked not to be identified, said they foresee widespread differences between Washington and Brasilia and difficulties coming to an agreement.
Washington has said it cannot negotiate Brazil's key demand -- lowering U.S. agricultural subsidies -- in regional talks. Such unilateral reduction would allow European countries and Japan to retain their own subsidies. Another target for Brazil are U.S. trade remedy laws, such as anti-dumping rules that protect against unfairly low-priced exports -- a form of predatory pricing.
One possible compromise would be to keep the same topics for negotiations but eliminate some of the content of each topic.
''Brazil's end game is for the talks to fail,'' said Peter Morici, professor of international business at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. ''I don't think Brazil is serious about liberalization.''
Washington has called for all 34 nations in the FTAA proposal to wrap up negotiation by the end of next year.
But Brazil has urged the region to consider revamping the FTAA agenda. Earlier this year, Brazil, with the largest economy in South America, called for a three-track approach to trade talks.
Under this approach, trade talks in the FTAA would be scaled back. The thorniest issues -- such as agricultural subsidies, new investment rules, intellectual property, government procurement and services -- would be negotiated in the WTO. Finally, Brazil suggested Washington could hold bilateral negotiations with the countries of the Mercosur, a struggling trade bloc that includes Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.
But U.S. trade negotiators lashed out at this triple-tiered approach, especially after Brazil led the so-called Group of 21 (actually 23 members at its height) during talks in Cancun, Mexico, demanding agricultural concessions.
In a speech Thursday to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Peter Allgeier compared this Brazilian proposal to the ''outdated approaches'' of ''limited preferential tariff arrangements'' of the Association for Latin American Integration, which has made scant headway since it was established in 1980.
''The three-track approach was not gaining support prior to Cancun,'' Allgeier said in a prepared text. ''It would appear to be even less viable in the post-Cancun setting.''
Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, who leads his country's trade negotiations, has voiced his support for the FTAA but insisted that it be limited.
''It has a good chance of success if we are pragmatic,'' Amorim told The Herald in Cancun. ''If we overload it, as we overloaded the WTO, then we may have some difficulties.''The Miami Herald:
