OAS TRADE REPRESENTATIVES CITE POLITICAL CHALLENGES OF THE FTAA

 
Trade experts from the OAS Trade Unit provided an upbeat but frank analysis of the current status of hemispheric trade negotiations during Florida International University's Eighteenth Annual Journalists and Editors Workshop in May. The head of the OAS Trade Unit, former Costa Rican Minister of Commerce José Manuel Salazar, reported "impressive procedural and technical progress" in the FTAA talks. However, he noted the serious political challenges that have yet to be met, including the issue of fast track authority. Political issues such as this one, he concluded, will determine the pace of negotiations in the future.

Salazar suggested that the labor and environmental questions currently blocking progress on trade issues in the US Congress could better be dealt with under a reinvigorated Summit process, which would strengthen the treatment of these areas within the inter-American system. The question that Salazar himself raises in a recent paper is how to get the Summit process back on track. The unraveling of this process, he argues, "poses a potentially serious risk not only to the Summit process itself but also in particular to the trade initiative" (The Trade Agenda in the Context of the Inter-American System, March 2000). Finally, he cited the lack of strong private sector initiatives as contributing to the absence of political will in Congress.

Yet, thanks to its technical and procedural nature, the FTAA has generally progressed more smoothly than the WTO. The OAS Trade Unit's Miami representative, Dr. Rosine Plank-Brumback, compared the two processes during her talk at the Journalists and Editors Conference. Plank-Brumback outlined five differences between the FTAA and the WTO negotiations. First, she noted the obvious fact that no new WTO round has been scheduled, while the FTAA has set goals and a full range of negotiations. Second, the FTAA agenda is more ambitious in that it seeks to eliminate barriers, while the WTO limits itself to reducing barriers specific areas. Third, the FTAA has no privileged or secret negotiations, such as those held in the WTO's "Green Room" at Seattle. All 34 nations of the FTAA have equal access to the negotiations. Fourth, the FTAA, unlike the WTO, allows direct private sector participation in the key area of e-commerce. Finally, the FTAA includes formal channels for civil society input, although Plank-Brumback acknowledged the inadequacy of the current mechanism.

Despite the many positive aspects of the FTAA talks, however, little is known about the process outside of the negotiations. This may be the real "political" challenge of the FTAA, and the Summit for that matter. Discussions such as this one, in which Salazar and Plunk-Brumback participated, have the potential to greatly improve support for integration as they improve understanding of what is involved.