RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Brazil's agricultural minister on Thursday railed against farm subsidies and a U.S. Congressman agreed they had cost his country credibility.
Agriculture Minister Marcus Pratini de Moraes called his country "the world's final agricultural frontier" and said farm subsidies in the U.S. and Europe were a major factor hindering Brazil's growth.
"We don't have any illusions. Countries defend their markets tooth and nail," said Moraes. "We don't believe in free trade, that is a subject for a student's thesis."
Rep. Jim Kolbe, an Arizona Republican, agreed the farm bill signed earlier this year by U.S. President George W. Bush to subsidize agriculture would make free trade talks more difficult.
"A number of other lawmakers and I have been calling for a reduction of these subsidies for a long time and the farm bill has been detrimental to our credibility," Kolbe said.
Kolbe brushed aside criticism that a lack of subsidies would hurt American farmers claiming the U.S. was the leading low cost producer of a number of farm products.
But Moraes said his country had already surpassed the U.S. in many of these areas such as soy and pork.
The two made their remarks at the World Economic Forum (news - web sites)'s Latin America Business Summit gathering some 400 delegates from 30 countries for the three-day conference, that opened Wednesday.
Aside from the form free trade talks under the auspices of the World Trade Organization, the U.S. is trying to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas that would stretch from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego by 2005.
A survey of the summit's participants showed 71 percent of them did not think the FTAA would go into effect according to schedule.
Earlier in the day, former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez told the summit international lending institutions should look to foster development rather than seek fiscal adjustments in the economies they are looking to help.
At a seminar entitled "Growth with Social Equity: The Challenge for Latin America," Gonzalez rigorously defended a more even distribution of wealth as a recipe for sustained growth.
"There is not a single example of sustained growth with a good part of the income going toward strengthening the market," Gonzalez said.
But he also had some words of advice for Brazil's president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, warning him to not forget the economic fundamentals in his search for greater social equality.
"The passion for redistributing wealth has to be accompanied by a passion for methods of generating of wealth and growth," Gonzalez said.
Silva, who was elected in a landslide on Oct. 27 and takes office on Jan. 1, is Brazil's first leftist president in 40 years.
Silva's rise in the polls in the run up to the election played havoc with Brazil's financial markets as investors feared a Workers' Party president would led to a default on the country's US$230 billion debt.
Investor jitters led to a the currency losing as much as 40 percent of its value. Stocks were off sharply as well.
Gonzalez said, however, markets had a similar reaction when he took office as Spanish Prime Minister in 1982, because he, like Silva — a former metal worker — had no administrative experience.
He said that during his administration he nonetheless succeeded in opening up the economy and privatizing much of the public sector.
The forum, best known for the annual conference it holds in Davos, Switzerland, is a private organization that stages economic summits around the world to promote an exchange of ideas between governments and the private sector.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. NoNonsense English offers this material non-commercially for research and educational purposes. I believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, i.e. the media service or newspaper which first published the article online and which is indicated at the top of the article unless otherwise specified.