Coral Gables, Fla. -- The free-traders strolled from the Mediterranean-styled splendor of the Biltmore Hotel, under a canopy of bougainvillea and palm trees and into the conference center to hear one of the Bush administration's open-market acolytes sing the praises of the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
"Reducing poverty is not just an afterthought of our policy; it's the motivation of our foreign policy," Robert Noriega, an assistant secretary of state, said in late October. "Free trade is primarily about helping the poor."
Picketing outside the Biltmore, protesters scoffed at Noriega's remarks. Wielding signs saying "Jobs with Justice" and "Stop the FTAA," the trade unionists, farm workers, neighborhood activists and environmentalists tried unsuccessfully to enter the Biltmore.
"We're seeing now the fight between democracy and corporate hegemony and we believe democracy will win," said Eric Rubin, director of the Florida Fair Trade Coalition. "When the votes come down, we believe the FTAA will be history."
Protester and proponent alike will gather this week in nearby Miami for the crucial FTAA Ministerial meeting. The stakes are high for the American and Caribbean trade ministers who'll meet at the InterContinental Hotel overlooking the blue-green waters of Biscayne Bay.
Their stated goal is to iron out vexing trade disputes that threaten to scuttle the proposed hemisphere-wide FTAA, encompassing 800 million consumers in 34 nations. The world's largest trade pact -- "NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement] on steroids," as pundits call it -- is supposed to be completed by the end of 2004.
Like cagey poker players, though, the region's leaders have started hedging their FTAA bets, bowing to political realities and hinting at a much-diluted deal. President Bush, who envisioned the FTAA as the cornerstone of his trade policy, is caught between remaining true to his free-market principles and getting re-elected next year.
"The upcoming ministerial is more about the politics of trade than it is the substance of trade," said Nao Matsukata, a former aide to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick. "The whole movement of trade liberalization that was starting to gain momentum in the initial years of the Bush administration is now starting to wane and come under some attack."
Georgia, Atlanta in particular, also has much at stake when the meetings begin Thursday. The state sold $6.2 billion worth of transportation equipment, computers, machinery, chemicals and commodities throughout the hemisphere last year.
What will bring Gov. Sonny Perdue and other officials to Miami, though, is the prospect of luring the FTAA headquarters to Atlanta. The competition is stiff -- eight other cities also want the secretariat -- and no decision is likely for at least a year.
Miami is considered the U.S. front-runner, with Panama City, Panama, deemed the Latin American favorite. But if the protests in South Florida get out of hand -- anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000 demonstrators are expected -- Miami may not recover from televised images of carnage in the streets akin to those from Seattle in 1999 at the World Trade Organization meeting.
"If nothing happens, that isn't news. But if something bad happens, that's news and it makes Miami look bad," said Ambler Moss, former President Jimmy Carter's ambassador to Panama. "This would cause obvious psychological damage to Miami's bid."
Blue-sky scenario|
The road to Miami began nearly a decade ago at the Biltmore Hotel. Fresh with success from the recently approved NAFTA, which bound the United States, Canada and Mexico to, over time, abolish barriers to cross-border commerce, the hemisphere's leaders vowed to create a common market stretching from Alaska to Chile. It would include 34 of the region's 35 nations; Communist Cuba wasn't invited.
FTAA proponents cite the burgeoning of Mexico's manufacturing economy as proof of NAFTA's success. Since 1993, U.S. trade with Mexico has doubled.
The solution to the hemisphere's chronic poverty is to open markets and restrict government intervention, according to the laissez-faire FTAA proponents. (Strict adherence to World Bank and International Monetary Fund lending policies is also a prerogative, they say.)
The FTAA blue-sky scenario goes like this: Once taxes and fees paid on border-crossing goods and services disappear, companies will become more competitive, consumers will discover lower prices and trade will grow, leading to an increase in a country's standard of living.
Starting Monday, lower-level trade officials and business leaders will meet in Miami to try and resolve roughly 5,000 disagreements, or "brackets," before the trade ministers get busy Thursday.
Opponents worry that the FTAA, like NAFTA, will lead to the loss of millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs. Their right to collectively bargain for contracts could be abolished under FTAA.
The anti-FTAA protesters are already on the move. Hundreds of farmers, students, union members, retirees, environmentalists, feminists, indigenous peoples and more are marching 34 miles -- one mile per country -- from Broward County to downtown Miami.
Lori Wallach, executive director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, said last week that "millions" of Mexican small farmers lost their livelihoods when NAFTA opened the door to massive U.S. agricultural exports. And, of the 800,000 Mexican maquiladora jobs created under NAFTA, more than half have since moved to lower-wage China, Wallach added.
The protesters' grievances coalesce around two major fears: that a secretive, FTAA court will supersede U.S. jurisprudence; and that multinational corporations will run roughshod over governments and businesses throughout the region.
Under NAFTA, for example, corporations successfully sued Mexico and Canada over their environmental regulations. The privatization of water, sewer, education and health-care services would more rapidly be turned over to corporate stewardship.
"We believe that working people should be the priority for the global economy, not corporate profits," said the Rev. Lucy Hitchcock-Seck, who protested outside the Biltmore. "We want world peace. The cost of peace is economic justice for all."
Chasm hard to bridge|
The FTAA's vicissitudes run much deeper than the social-justice-vs.-corporate-profit argument. Divisions within the United States, for example, make a comprehensive FTAA deal unlikely. Trying to knit together 34 different economies and political philosophies, though, may offer a greater challenge.
Two months ago, in Cancun, Mexico, the schism between the developed (the United States and other wealthy nations) and the developing (led largely by Brazil and India) worlds widened to the point where talks on reducing trade barriers collapsed.
Brazil and other resource-rich countries with burgeoning manufacturing sectors demanded greater access to U.S. and European markets and an end to subsidies paid by the rich nations to farmers.
The developed countries, the United States in particular, demanded more access for service and financial industries.
USTR's Zoellick, who accused Brazil and other so-called G-20 countries of negotiating in bad faith, proceeded to negotiate separate trade deals with FTAA countries (Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua) and plans to do the same with others (Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia).
A hemisphere-wide trade deal, though, remains the administration ideal. Zoellick and Celso Amorim, Brazil's foreign minister, papered over differences this month during an "emergency" meeting in Washington. They punted the thorniest of issues -- agricultural subsidies, intellectual property rights, investment rules -- to the WTO.
Political realities, in Washington, Brasilia and across the region, will most likely inhibit any meaningful breakthrough in Miami. Democratic presidential contenders, hewing ever closer to protectionist rhetoric, remind voters daily that 2.6 million manufacturing jobs have been lost under Bush's watch. Latin America and the Caribbean too remain roiled over supposed free-trade benefits. Brazil's sugar, orange and soybean farmers may salivate over the huge U.S. market, but its unions and small businesses fear the entry of U.S. corporations.
"I expect an FTAA light. It might be all you get is one page of platitudes," said Moss, director of the North-South Center at the University of Miami. "But that doesn't mean it's worthless. At least that forms a basis for adding to it as the political situation permits -- when the U.S. election year is over."
A watered-down FTAA, though, probably wouldn't require a headquarters, much to the chagrin of Atlanta boosters.
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