TRADE: Heavy Going at FTAA Negotiations

By Paul Weinberg Reprint | | Print |

Paul Weinberg

TORONTO, Nov 7 1999 (IPS) - Trade ministers from 34 countries in the Americas failed last week to negotiate a framework agreement to start work on hammering out details for a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), scheduled to be set up by 2005.

The ministers did agree at their meeting here to continue talks on the matter of a framework, with the aim of having a draft document ready by the year 2001.

One contentious issue raised in Toronto was the amount of leeway that should be given to the small economies in the Western Hemisphere. Representatives from some Caribbean nations stated that there was not enough room in the proposed framework for an adjustment to free trade.

Missing from the conference were the senior trade officials from the United States and Mexico – Canada’s main trading partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Deputy U.S. trade representative Richard Fisher explained that his senior colleague, Charlene Barshefsky was busy in Washington lobbying the American Senate to extend new trade privileges to African and Caribbean nations.

Meanwhile, there was no clear explanation for the absence of Barshefsky’s Mexican counterpart, Herminio Blanco from the Toronto session, according to news reports.

The trade ministers did announce that they would form a common front against agricultural subsidies, especially in Europe, during the next round of multi-lateral trade discussions of the World Trade Organization (WTO, scheduled for Seattle, Washington Nov 30.

“This is one point we do have in common. We have a commitment to pursue it in a very clear and a very direct way at the WTO,” says Pierre Pettigrew, the Canadian trade minister who chaired the Toronto ministerial session.

“Eight-five per cent of the export subsidies that are distorting trade in agriculture are encapsulated and captured in the common agricultural policy of Europe.”

Trade ministers also agreed to streamline customs and red tape across the national borders in the western hemisphere, starting in January 2,000.

Pettigrew told reporters that among the achievements of the Toronto gathering was an agreement by the trade ministers that they would continue to meet non-governmental organizations, or civil society in the process towards achieving an FTAA, despite opposition from Mexico.

Last Wednesday, critics of international trade agreements from across the Americas wre able to grill the trade ministers about their negotiations.

Non-governmental orghanisations (NGOs) earlier met Nov. 1-3 at their own “Our Americas” alternative conference. Financial assistance from the Canadian governments had made possible the ability of representatives from more than 50 labour, community and human rights organizations from across the Americas to come and meet at this Toronto event.

Nevertheless, the newly organized Hemispheric Social Alliance did not shy away from issuing tough statements on how previous liberalized trade agreements had led to increased poverty and loss of jobs in Mexico under NAFTA and that any negotiated FTAA has to include a social dimension, as well as protection for labour and human rights.

“We are tired of having our concerns go into the ‘suggestion box’, while the concerns of corporations are given precedence. We want basic labor standards, such as laws against child labor and the right to freedom of association, included in the trade agreement,” said Luis Anderson, general secretary of the Inter- American Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT).

But trade ministers made it clear they did not endorse any of the recommendations made by the Hemispheric Social Alliance. “What occurred to me was they all had the same chip implanted in their brain and that they were all saying the same thing,” commented Maude Barlow, chairwoman of the Council of Canadians.

“What’s different now that you’ve had a chance to speak to the ministers,” stated Ken Traynor, a research director with the Canadian Environmental Law Association, at a press conference for the Hemispheric Social Alliance.

Pettigrew told reporters that he and the other trade ministers were “extremely grateful for the hard work that the civil society representatives have been making.”

However the Canadian minister stressed that ultimately it would be the governments themselves and their representatives that would do the negotiating – “not with business people (1,000 of whom attended an Americas Business Forum last week) and not with civil society, but with the elected representatives.”

Traynor compared the closed-door nature of the FTAA meetings here with other international negotiations in Geneva regarding a treaty covering persistent organic pollutants. There, environmentalists along with representatives of chemical industry, as part of the Canadian delegation, were admitted to the backrooms where they had input into the actual legal wording of the treaty documents.

“When they say there is no precedent, we can’t open up this process and so on, what they are saying is that they don’t want to open up the process. We complicate their free trade agreement. That’s why the door has been closed,” said Traynor.