TRADE-AMERICAS: Canada Has Buried the FTAA, Charges Brazilian Minister

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 8 2001 (IPS) - Canada has “buried” the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by spreading fears that Brazilian beef could be contaminated with ‘mad cow’ disease, Brazilian Agriculture Minister Marcus Pratini de Moraes said Thursday.

There is no justification for the ban on imports of Brazilian beef adopted by Canada last Friday supposedly due to the fear that ‘mad cow’ disease or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) could be present in Brazil, the minister said in an interview with Globo, Brazil’s leading TV network.

The measure responds to “other interests” and not to the purported health motives, said Pratini, who suggested that it was a political decision taken in reprisal for the growth of Brazil’s aeronautics company Embraer in the world market for medium-sized planes, which was previously dominated by the Canadian firm Bombardier.

The Brazilian public reacted by boycotting Canadian products in restaurants, and farm products like fertilisers, while Congress shelved the trade agreements that have been signed by the two governments and are only awaiting parliamentary approval.

The secretary of the Interministerial Commission on Foreign Trade, Roberto Giannetti da Fonseca, said Brazil could turn to the International Court of Justice at The Hague to seek compensation for the losses caused by Ottawa’s decision, or file a complaint with the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Brazil will demand that the WTO study “the responsibility of sanitary and phytosanitary authorities for declarations concerning risk assessments with impact on private agents,” Brazil’s ambassador to the WTO, Celso Amorim, told that body’s General Council on Thursday.

Amorim said his remarks referred to the “serious trade losses to Brazilian beef exports caused by precipitate and arbitrary declarations and decisions by Canada.”

Canada’s representative to the WTO, Sergio Marchi, responded that “we will meet in whatever WTO body that is triggered by Brazil. The recent action taken by Canada was neither precipitous nor arbitrary. Our action was taken based on health and safety reasons, which are entirely legitimate measures.”

The sense of indignation continues to grow in Brazil as news reports underline the difficulties that this country’s exports will face, as suspicion surrounding Brazil’s beef spreads around the world.

Chile’s Ambassador to Brazil, Carlos Eduardo Mena, denied reports that Santiago was studying the possibility of suspending imports of Brazilian beef.

However, the Chilean Embassy’s trade attache Gonzalo Ibañez acknowledged that the situation in Brazil’s stockbreeding sector was being examined, in order to calm consumer fears raised by Canada’s ban on Brazilian beef.

The conflict thus threatens to generate new difficulties for the processes of regional and continent-wide integration. Chile, like Bolivia, is an associate of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), whose full members are Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Messages of solidarity with Brazil from its Mercosur partners have been glaringly absent – perhaps a consequence of the prospect of winning market space lost by Brazil’s stockbreeders, say some analysts.

Argentine authorities said Mercosur should adopt a joint strategy in this case, as in other questions involving animal health regulations.

But Brazil sees it as a problem that goes far beyond health questions, and one that involves unequal relations of trade in which the industrialised North imposes its conditions on the developing South.

The WTO decided that Canada could apply trade sanctions to the tune of 1.4 billion dollars over the next six years, after ruling that Brazilian government subsidies of Embraer’s airplane exports had hurt Canada’s Bombardier.

Analysts say that ruling clearly demonstrated that the rules governing global trade favoured the North, because they were drawn up according to the standards agreed on by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, whose 30 members include all of the world’s industrialised nations.

Brazil is also facing a complaint brought by the United States against its patent law, which allows “compulsive licensing” for the local production of medicine, without the patent-holder’s consent, in cases of “national emergencies” like the spread of AIDS.

The conflict with Canada will tend to strengthen sectors in Brazil opposed to the creation of a continent-wide FTAA. Politicians, as well as business leaders like rancher Pedro Camargo Neto, suggested that Brazil boycott the Apr 20-22 Summit of the Americas in the Canadian city of Quebec.

It will also strengthen social movements that threaten to stage in Quebec a repeat of Seattle – the U.S. city where the massive protests staged by the “anti-globalisation” movement foiled the WTO’s ministerial conference in December 1999.

Free trade, as defined by rich countries and transnational corporations, was flatly rejected by the Jan 25-30 World Social Forum, which drew some 1,500 delegates of non-governmental organisations, social movements and leftist parties from throughout the world to Porto Alegre in southern Brazil.

The massive protests that have affected the WTO as well as the assemblies of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have also taken aim at the FTAA.

Trade unionists participating in the World Social Forum called for a massive mobilisation against the FTAA meeting of trade ministers scheduled for Apr 6-7 in Buenos Aires, and especially against the Summit of the Americas in Quebec.

A number of social organisations that took part in the Porto Alegre gathering are linked together in a Continental Social Alliance against the FTAA, which has called on protesters to converge on Buenos Aires and Quebec.

In Quebec, besides the actions planned to oppose the liberalisation of trade and finances that according to the Alliance threatens the environment as well as human, labour, social and women’s rights, a “people’s summit” has been called to discuss alternative proposals for continent-wide integration.

The dispute between Brazil and Canada offers new arguments to those opposed to “lopsided” hemispheric integration, and a prolongation of the conflict could lead to failure, at least of the April meetings, analyst warn.