RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 16 (IPS) - Brazil's powerful agribusiness industry is not pleased with the prospect of a weak Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) or the possible failure to reach the January 2005 deadline for completion of the talks.
But the growing possibility that negotiations will come up with a ''non-FTAA, not even an 'FTAA Lite','' is not only the fault of the United States, but also a result of Brazil's failure to offer anything in exchange for greater access to the U.S. market, Gilman Rodrigues, chairman of the National Confederation of Agriculture and Stockbreeding's Foreign Trade Commission (CNA), told IPS.
However, leading industrialist Osvaldo Douat sees things in a different light, blaming the hurdles that the FTAA talks have run up against on Washington's refusal to open the U.S. market to agricultural imports or to reduce subsidies to farmers.
Douat noted that the U.S. government is more vulnerable to lobbying from groups like farmers and agribusiness in an election year -- the U.S. presidential elections are due in November -- and he blamed the stiffening of Washington's position on that phenomenon.
Two camps clearly emerged from the Feb. 3-6 FTAA talks in the southern Mexican city of Puebla, with the Group of 14 (G-14) led by the United States and including Canada, Mexico, the nations of Central America, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, on one hand, and the four full members of South America's Mercosur trade bloc -- Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay -- on the other.
The negotiators failed to agree on a framework for moving the talks forward, and decided to gather again in Puebla in the first week of March.
The talks in Puebla only accentuated the likelihood of a weak FTAA -- what critics have dubbed an ''FTAA Ultra-Lite''.
U.S. negotiators made it clear in Mexico that they would only offer greater access to products from the Mercosur if the South American bloc compromised on services, government procurement, investment and intellectual property.
But Brazilian diplomats like Ambassador Rubens Barbosa in Washington say the United States made the first move towards limiting the scope of the FTAA by excluding farm subsidies and anti-dumping rules from the regional negotiations, and only agreeing to discuss them within the context of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
After that, Brasilia put its foot down regarding services, government procurement and patents.
Rodrigues, however, argued that Brazil could make ''a more daring proposal'' designed to unblock the talks, without hurting its own interests, and in fact favouring them.
He noted, for example, that Brazil is keen on drawing investment to improve the country's infrastructure, whose shortcomings are seen as a major obstacle to development.
It is agribusiness that guarantees Brazil a trade surplus, which stood at more than 24 billion dollars last year, he pointed out. But to sustain that performance, which is based on low-value-added products, the already huge, and steadily growing, volume of exports requires urgent investment in means of transport, he underlined.
Under these conditions, compounded by the scarcity of national investment, both public and private, it is difficult to fathom Brazil's refusal to open the market to foreign investment under an adequate regulatory framework, as a step forward in the FTAA talks that could prompt U.S. concessions in agriculture, said Rodrigues.
In his view, ''a lack of will on everyone's part'' is standing in the way of progress in the talks, and insisting on a U.S. concession in trade in agriculture before agreeing to a compromise on investment, services or industry ''is poor negotiating.''
Pessimism has grown since the Puebla talks among the business community, trade negotiators and analysts in Brazil with respect to the possibility of meeting the January 2005 deadline for the completion of the talks and the goal of having the continent-wide free trade area up and running by the end of next year.
''Brazil needs to carefully and critically evaluate the costs of failing to reach agreement on an FTAA,'' because it will lose trade, investment and jobs as more than 15 bilateral and plurilateral free trade deals between Latin American countries and the United States take shape in place of a real FTAA, warns a report by the Institute of Studies on Trade and International Negotiations (ICONE), which specialises in agricultural questions.
The problem will only be aggravated if the members of the G-14 sign agreements on the issues under negotiation, further undermining interest in the creation of a strong FTAA.
Washington has adopted a strategy aimed at obtaining the maximum number of concessions while offering very little in exchange, as seen in bilateral trade agreements that have recently been signed, according to ICONE. Sugar, for example, was left out of an accord with Australia, a major sugar-producer.
But there is ''one last hope'' -- the talks to take place in early March in Puebla, said Mario Marconini, executive director of the Brazilian International Relations Centre (CEBRI).
The first round of talks in Puebla was virtually condemned to failure after negotiators agreed in last November's talks in Miami on a two-tiered approach -- a watered-down blueprint of the trade area that would allow member countries to pick and choose which obligations they will commit to, rather than having to sign on to a single high-level pact, Marconini said in an interview with IPS.
If the March talks in Puebla also fail, there will be no FTAA by the January 2005 deadline, because election-year pressure in the United States will only continue to grow, he said.
But perhaps it would be preferable, added the analyst, ''not to complete a bad accord in 2004'' but to hope for better conditions in 2005, under a re-elected Bush or a new president in the White House. (END/2004)
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