Free Trade Area of the Americas
The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) was a proposed agreement to eliminate or reduce the trade barriers among all countries in the Americas, excluding Cuba. Negotiations to establish the FTAA ended in failure, however, with all parties unable to reach an agreement by the 2005 deadline they had set for themselves.
In the last round of negotiations, trade ministers from 34 countries met in Miami, Florida, in the United States, in November 2003 to discuss the proposal.[1] The proposed agreement was an extension of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Discussions have faltered over similar points as the Doha Development Round of World Trade Organization (WTO) talks; developed nations sought expanded trade in services and increased intellectual property rights, while less developed nations sought an end to agricultural subsidiesand free trade in agricultural goods. Similar to the WTO talks, Brazil took a leadership role among the less developed nations, while the United States took a similar role for the developed nations.
Free Trade Area of the Americas began with the Summit of the Americas in Miami, Florida, on December 11, 1994, but the FTAA came to public attention during the Quebec City Summit of the Americas, held in Canada in 2001, a meeting targeted by massive anti-corporatization and anti-globalization protests. The Miami negotiations in 2003 met similar protests, though not as large.
In previous negotiations, the United States had pushed for a single comprehensive agreement to reduce trade barriers for goods, while increasing intellectual property protection. Specific intellectual property protections could include Digital Millennium Copyright Act style copyright protections similar to the U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement. Another protection would likely have restricted the importation or cross importation of pharmaceuticals, similar to the proposed agreement between the United States and Canada. Brazil posed a three-track approach that called for a series of bilateral agreements to reduce specific tariffs on goods, a hemispheric pact on rules of origin, and a dispute resolution process Brazil proposed to omit the more controversial issues from the FTA, leaving them to the WTO.
The location of the FTA Secretariat was to have been determined in 2005. The contending cities were: Atlanta, Chicago, Galveston, Houston, San Juan, and Miami in the United States; Cancún and Puebla in Mexico; Panama City, Panama; and Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The U.S. city of Colorado Springs also submitted its candidacy in the early days but subsequently withdrew.[2] Miami, Panama City and Puebla served successively an interim secretariat headquarters during the negotiation process.
The last summit was held at Mar del Plata, Argentina, in November 2005, but no agreement on FTA was reached. Of the 39 countries present at the negotiations, 20 pledged to meet again in 2006 to resume negotiations, but no meeting took place. The failure of the Mar del Plata summit to establish a comprehensive FTA agenda augured poorly.
