The Americas Can´t Agree on Free Trade, FTAA
The deep controversy over free trade and how to promote job creation was evident last week during the IV Americas Summit that came to a close Saturday. The final declaration draft remained “almost finished” with “two or three paragraphs still open”.
Argentina´s Foreign Affairs Deputy Minister Jorge Taiana admitted Thursday afternoon that the extenuating process of reaching an agreed only declaration text was “close” but still had several hurdles ahead.
Furthermore, summit sources revealed that Argentina´s Foreign Affairs minister Rafael Bielsa had a long half-hour phone talk directly with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on board Air Force One en route to Argentina in an attempt to iron out differences on time for the official launching Friday of the Americas 34 leaders Summit.
The stumbling block was free trade and more specifically the U.S. sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas which has split the summit, on one side host Argentina and its Mercosur partners, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, who oppose the reopening of negotiations acknowledging that conditions are not favorable to the initiative which was originally meant to take effect at the beginning of this year.
On the other side the White House together with Mexico and Chile insisted on a specific mention to FTAA in the final declaration with the renewal on hemispheric trade talks scheduled to begin no later than April 2006.
Even more radical was Venezuela´s president Hugo Chavez who has declared FTAA “dead and buried” and insisted that one of the principal objectives of the conclave in Mar del Plat is “to definitively” bury FTAA, the free trade market idea launched in 1994 and planned to stretch from Alaska all the way down to Tierra del Fuego.
But in spite of all the struggling on free trade and the FTAA, President Bush had some successes to show. Friday he met with the presidents from those countries who have signed the CAFTA-DR trade accord, the Central American nations, except for Panama, and the Dominican Republic.
