Trade and Industry minister Leslie Miller says the Free Trade Area of The Americas (FTAA) is essentially dead because the U.S. is involved in bilateral agreements that are ‘killing’ the major trade treaty.
Earlier this month, U.S. President George Bush signed a smaller regional accord, the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which aims to expand trade between that country and Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.
Under CAFTA, more than 80 percent of U.S. exports of consumer and industrial goods would become duty-free to those nations immediately, with remaining tariffs phased out over 10 years.
“So for the time being FTAA is dead since it’s not moving. There certainly has not been any FTAA talks in the last 18 months,” said Mr Miller.
“It will continue to be on the back burner because the United States signed regional accords like CAFTA. They themselves are killing FTAA. Both The Bahamas and Mexico told them at the last meeting in Miami that they were defeating their own purpose.”
Mr Miller continued, “We told them (the U.S.), you are trying to have a hemispheric trade agreement and, you, the biggest partner pushing it, are also having these bilaterals with the same people in the same hemisphere. So what is the purpose of having an FTAA when you yourselves are diluting FTAA?”
Last Thursday Mexico – anxious to resume FTAA talks – asked regional trade negotiators to meet in Puebla to discuss the fate of the trade agreement. Puebla is the site of the current FTAA headquarters and was the location of the last major meeting of FTAA negotiators in February 2004.
Caribbean countries reportedly asked the Mexican administrators to set a time to resume FTAA talks.
Mr Miller said The Bahamas was not represented at that forum because it was not a ministerial meeting.
“It was just dealing with the facilitators of FTAA. It was between them. But it has not gone anywhere,” he explained.
The Mexican government, as well as the Inter-American Development Bank, the Organization of American States and the Economic Commission for Latin America and some Caribbean countries continue to fund the Puebla headquarters, reportedly staffed by a skeleton crew.
The headquarters had little activity after the collapse of FTAA discussions in February 2004, caused by friction between the United States and Brazil.
At that time, Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell, who attended those talks, said, “Brazil and the United States are the two countries that are engaged in quite tortuous negotiations over the question of how to advance market access.”
He explained that Brazil had taken the position that the United States should remove its agricultural subsidies, which was reportedly a difficult proposition for the U.S. to swallow.
Brazil has a strong manufacturing capability and a significant manufacturing production sector that it rigidly protects. It wants the U.S. to eliminate subsidies on agriculture, believing the subsidies are destroying not only the agriculture products but also the manufacturing sectors of countries in the region.
Mr Miller said that although the advancement of FTAA was doubtful at this point, the U.S. still hopes to host a meeting on the subject in Washington D.C next month.
Helen Ebong, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, is scheduled to attend that meeting.
By: MINDELL SMALL, The Nassau Guardian
