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Future of FTAA Not What It Was |
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By Ignacio Avalos Gutiérrez*
What came out of the first draft of the hemisphere-wide trade treat was a skeleton "that gradually will be fleshed out".
CARACAS - When then-U.S. president Bill Clinton proposed the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in 1994, things did not look easy, but they did not seem as enormously complicated as they do now that 2004 is underway.
The nearly religious faith in the liberalization of markets as an essential means towards development, and the belief that economic growth and social welfare would flow unstoppably from it, have been debilitated.
Over the past decade, all has not been a bed of roses in the trade talks, and there are few left who would bet that the FTAA will take effect in January 2005 as was originally planned.
From the Latin American side, the cracks are gradually becoming visible in a treaty that was thought out in terms that benefit the interests of the United States too much. The United States represents 70 percent of the hemisphere's gross domestic product and already has trade partners this region of the world where more than half of the people live in poverty.
The cracks are evident in the agricultural trade issue, one of the thorniest, in which Washington is steadfast in its refusal to give up its farm subsidies; in the environmental area, which in the FTAA rules is considered a minor issue, subject to the logic of investment; in intellectual property, where regulations are to be even more strict than those of the World Trade Organization (WTO); in the discriminatory treatment of national investment with respect to foreign investment; and in the de fact preeminence of the prerogatives of the private sector over those of the state.
There are cracks in the area of human rights, damaged not only in content (demands for health services and education are ignored, as are economic and social rights, as they are turned into private contractual relations), but also in the ability to respect, protect and guarantee them.
With alarm we have seen -- let's put it this way -- the liquidation of the decision-making power of the state, as if it has been forgotten that democracy is not possible without a strong state, and that the FTAA should extend even further the public authorities, the only way to control capitalism that could easily turn authoritarian.
We also see the overwhelming predominance of the market as a mechanism for regulating social live and the emergence of a "supra-national" sovereignty that, in practice, seems difficult to distinguish from the power represented by the U.S. government.
The white smoke coming out of the latest FTAA ministerial conference, in Miami, only tells us of a minimal agreement -- "decaffeinated", said someone -- the result, undoubtedly of the pressure on some Latin American countries to take into consideration the asymmetries and imbalances between them.
As such, what came out of the first draft of the FTAA treaty is a skeleton "that will be fleshed out," said one of the trade ministers in attendance, while the thornier issues were dispatched to the realm of the WTO.
The future of the FTAA is not what it once was. But it is difficult to know if it will be better or worse. It will depend on how things play out between the U.S. government and countries like Argentina and Brazil, capable of serving as a counterweight from their position in Mercosur (Southern Common Market). It will also depend on how the bilateral trade treaties with the U.S. unfold. There is the risk that the FTAA will end up, at least for awhile, a patchwork quilt.
And it will depend on the opinion of civil society, which is increasingly suspicious of an accord of this magnitude, one that would affect the lives of everyone in the Americas, and is being negotiated behind closed doors.
* Ignacio Avalos Gutiérrez is a Venezuelan columnist, and is former minister of science and technology.
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