EVER SINCE Ronald Reagan invoked the idea of a Free Trade Area of the Americas, the notion has appealed to trophy-hunting presidents. A hemispheric trade partnership, uniting the 800 million people between Alaska and Tierra del Fuego, would help spread prosperity southward, bolstering democracy much as the North American Free Trade Agreement has done in Mexico. President Bush and his trade representative, Robert Zoellick, deserve credit for pushing this vision forward. Today ministers from 34 nations of the Americas will convene for a trade summit in Quito, Ecuador. The intention is to conclude negotiations for a free-trade area by January 2005. But this ambitious target is not remotely plausible unless two of the region's biggest players -- the United States and Brazil -- make up their minds that they really want to meet it.
Ambivalence is most obvious in Brazil, whose newly elected president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, once denounced the free-trade area as a U.S. plot to annex his country. There are signs that Mr. da Silva has moderated his stance; he is sending a respected representative to the Quito summit. But even if the president-elect essentially reverts to the trade policies of his centrist predecessor, Brazil's intentions will remain unclear. With 170 million people and an economy a shade smaller than Canada's, Brazil has always been tempted by the idea of self-sufficiency rather than producing for export. Though it opened its economy in the 1990s, Brazil remains captive to protectionist lobbies; Mr. da Silva's election merely confirms the lure of autarkic ideas in Brazilian society. Sometimes in the past year, Brazil's reaction to U.S. trade proposals has been to doubt their sincerity rather than to embrace them and so find out whether they are genuine.
A similar ambivalence exists on the U.S. side, though it is better hidden. Despite the Bush administration's professed enthusiasm for a free-trading hemisphere, questions exist about its willingness to deliver on the substance. To break through Brazilian misgivings, the United States needs to make concessions on products that Brazil wants to export, and these products happen to be guarded in the United States by ferocious lobbyists. Brazil exports steel, but the United States has blocked part of Brazil's exports with anti-dumping measures. Brazil produces orange juice, but the United States hits citrus imports with a mixture of tariffs and a special discriminatory tax on foreigners. Brazil is a big grower of sugar, but the United States imposed prohibitive tariffs on foreign sugar 20 years ago, causing Brazilian shipments to fall 87 percent almost immediately. Unfortunately, the citrus and sugar lobbies are strong in Florida, a key battleground state in presidential contests and one governed by the president's brother. Steel is important in swing states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
It is hard to challenge these lobbies, but Mr. Bush has to accept the fact that this is a test of his free-trade credentials. The United States gains nothing from lobby-coddling; the sugar tariffs alone cost U.S. consumers around $2 billion annually. Moreover, U.S. protectionism gives Brazilian protectionists the excuse they need not to engage in serious negotiations for a free-trade area; they can paint the Bush administration's liberalizing talk as hypocritical and empty. For these reasons, the White House should authorize Mr. Zoellick to offer big concessions on sugar, citrus and steel -- and be prepared to make good on them.
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