OTTAWA (Reuters) - Differences over farm subsidies, which undermined recent world trade talks, could also impair efforts to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas, Canada's trade minister said on Tuesday.
Canada, one of the world's largest farm exporters, supported efforts to cut agricultural subsidies at global trade negotiations in Cancun, Mexico, this month.
But Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew said the failure to agree to a worldwide deal in Cancun would make it difficult for countries like the United States to agree to reduce farm subsidies as part of a Western Hemisphere agreement, if Brazil and other Latin American countries insist on cuts.
"It would seem to be very, very difficult for the United States to move much and make concessions on agricultural subsidies without the European Union making the same concessions multilaterally," he told a luncheon of journalists and diplomats.
European farmers could gain a competitive advantage over their counterparts in the United States or Canada if the FTAA countries agreed on subsidy cuts without getting a similar concession from Europe.
"You would be allowing the European Union to do things in Brazil that you would not be allowing an American farmer," Pettigrew said.
"Brazil and most Latin American countries will have to decide how much agriculture needs to be covered by the Free Trade Area of the Americas," the minister said.
"The more they demand, the more difficult it will be."
Canada shares the U.S. view on this point, to a certain extent, he said.
At a meeting of trade ministers of the Americas in Miami in November, which is supposed to launch the final year of negotiations on the FTAA, Pettigrew said everything would depend on the attitude of the Latin Americans on the agricultural file.
In any case, next year is an election year in the United States, and Pettigrew said he would be very surprised if an FTAA agreement were reached by the scheduled date of January 2005.
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