Views from across the Americas

The Gazette

Folha de S.Paulo

Sao Paulo, Brazil

"Justice in the FTAA"

This weekend's Free Trade Area of the Americas summit in Quebec City, Canada, illustrates once again the high risk such an accord would pose to Brazil.

The United States government signaled this week that it does not intend to agree to any changes within an FTAA regarding its subsidies to agriculture or its anti-dumping legislation. Changes in these areas are required if the U.S. market is to be opened to Brazilian products. . . .

Yet the U.S. has put other non-tariff issues on the table. The release of a secret FTAA negotiating document, for instance, reveals that it wants the new trading bloc's investment rules to include a provision that would let private firms sue governments before international tribunals.

Such a rule already exists in the North American Free Trade Agreement, and it has allowed a U.S. firm to sue a Mexican municipality before an international court for having closed a toxic waste dump of a company that was contaminating the local groundwater. . . .

The U.S. government has acknowledged it will take time to obtain "fast-track" approval from Congress. . . . Without this fast-track, Washington believes it will be very difficult to negotiate an FTAA treaty. Brazilian diplomats are banking on this internal difficulty within the U.S. postponing an FTAA or at least preventing it from coming into force any earlier.

But the risks of an FTAA suggest that is a rash course of action.

- Editorial

http://www.uol.com.br/fsp

The New York Times

New York, U.S.A.

"Biggest Obstacle to Selling Trade Pact Is Sovereignty"

Turning (the final summit communique's) lofty principles into a real agreement will be a complex task. The biggest problem comes down to one word: sovereignty. . . .

(For) the serious critics of free trade accords, the fundamental problem is that they have no control over the forces that set environmental or labor rules.

And they believe that they have been excluded from setting those rules, a feeling reinforced by a recent report by the Leadership Council for Inter-American Summitry, a group of academics and economists. It concluded that "the gap between summit promises and accomplishments is so wide as to have created a public crisis of confidence."

Sovereignty ... is a concern among Latin America's elected leaders as well, and several made clear that they planned to proceed with enormous care.

Brazil's president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, showed no more enthusiasm for a quick free trade area than he has before. His country has deep doubts that the United States would really allow Brazilian orange juice, steel, shoes and other products into the American market with virtually no duties, competing with American workers.

Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, a populist whom Mr. Bush approaches warily, took exception to several clauses in the communique, indicating problems to come.

Even Canada objects to provisions that would let international investors challenge any nation's laws on the grounds that they threaten the profitability of those investments. Under the Nafta, United Parcel Service is already challenging Canada's subsidies for its postal service.

Such concerns are only going to get more intense. Latin America has made progress in the last decade, but its many American-inspired economic reforms have had limited effect. Growth has been a modest 3 per cent, unemployment is up and a third of the population of 180 million people earns $2 a day.

For Latin leaders, "selling this at home won't be easy," said Richard Feinberg of the University of California, a former Clinton administration official who studied the topic.

It will not be easy for Mr. Bush, either. . . .

- News Analysis by David E. Sanger

www.nytimes.com

El Tiempo

Bogota, Colombia

"Trade uncertainty at the Quebec Summit"

Many countries with weak economies are wondering what hemispheric free trade will mean in practice. They are also wondering ... how harmonization could realistically occur among such dissimilar economies as the United States, with its 270 million inhabitants, and St. Kitts and Neves, with only 40,000.

Moreover, the movement for free trade appears to have hit up against a wall of regional preoccupations and interests symbolized by the growing distance between NAFTA and Mercosur countries. Some believe that it would be wiser to strengthen regional pacts before joining a hemispheric one.

Brazil and Venezuela are in this camp; fearing domination of the region by the United States, they would rather take all the time they need to prevent that from happening. . . .

Brazil wants to lead a South American bloc built around Mercosur that will give the southern countries some negotiating strength in FTAA negotiations; not doing this, they feel, would leave them at the mercy of the great "giant of the north."

Not everyone shares Brazil's and Venezuela's positions. Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien believes mistrust of the "northern giant" is unfounded, saying: "Our experience in NAFTA shows it is possible to prosper with quality of life and competitiveness.". . .

Canada, the U.S., Chile and Colombia are in the camp that believes an FTAA ... should take effect by 2005. This, however, is another point on which leaders were not able to reach agreement.

Partly because there is no consensus on key chapters such as market access, subsidies and the elimination of non-tariff barriers, they will only begin negotiating next year. . . .

- News report by Karen

Jimenez Zubiria

http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/

Proceso

Mexico City, Mexico

"The democracy clause: necessary but insufficient"

The inclusion of this clause is probably the meeting's most important political achievement and constitutes the culmination of a long process initiated years ago within the Organization of American States to guarantee democracy in the region. . . .

It makes sense for Mexico to support the democracy clause at the Summit of the Americas. This is an important change of position. . . . Let us hope that beyond the democracy clause, the summit process will give greater impetus to a "social clause" that would complement democracy with truly sustainable development and a commitment to the most vulnerable and impoverished in society. Without this, any basis for international cooperation will be weak, for no solid democracy can exist in the absence of justice and development and in the presence of hunger and illiteracy.

- News analysis by Agustin

Gutierrez Canet

www.proceso.com.mx

The Washington Post

Washington, D.C., U.S.A. "Summit of the Americas" ,p> The Bush administration's attempt to move the target date for a Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement from 2005 to 2003 already has been turned back by Latin American resistance. Now, an effort to formally establish democracy as a condition for participation is faltering. The Canadian government, among others, favoured language in this weekend's summit resolution that would ban any non-democratic nation from the free trade area. But the provision has been watered down so that would-be dictators need only fear being excluded from "the Summit of the Americas process" - whatever that means.

- Editorial

www.washingtonpost.com Clarin

Buenos Aires, Argentina

"Bush promises to get 'fast track' by year's end"

What has become clear is that the U.S. attitude toward the region is very different from its stance toward the countries of the Pacific. APEC, the trade zone encompassing all of the countries of this region, has no democracy clause because this would automatically exclude China as well as some other "Asian tigers." . . .

- News report by Ana Baron

http://ar.clarin.com/diario

Pagina/12

Buenos Aires, Argentina

"Workers' rights: a subject for archeologists?"

The country leading the process of globalization appears to obey only its own rules. That gives its corporations the impunity they need as they hunt down cheap labour and conquer lands its dirty industries can pollute at will. Paradoxically, this same country ... is now saying there is no other solution than to introduce "social clauses" and "environmental protection" in free-trade accords. What is the reality, stripped of the public-relations campaign?

These clauses are mere public-relations gambits, yet the mere mention of workers' rights terrifies the most fervent advocates of starvation wages, elastic working hours and the freedom to fire employees.

Upon leaving the presidency of Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo joined the boards of directors of Union Pacific Corporation and the Proctor and Gamble consortium, which operates in 140 countries. He also leads a United Nations commission and offers his thoughts to Forbes magazine: in technocratic language, he professes indignation against "the imposition of homogeneous labour standards in new trade agreements." Translated into plain language, this means: let's throw out once and for all any international legislation that still protects workers. . . .

In an era of globalized money that has divided the world into tamers and the tamed, will it be possible to internationalize the struggle for the dignity of labour? There's a challenge worth embracing.

- Column by Eduardo Galleano

http://www.pagina12.com.ar

El Nacional

Caracas, Venezuela

"Canadian agenda"

Topics such as drug trafficking - and especially the Plan Colombia - occupy a privileged spot on the agenda. Canada will present a document to strengthen democracy. (But) in Santiago, some key decisions were (also) made, such as the agreement to commit significant resources to education. What happened - or did not happen - on that score? A critical review of previous declarations and action plans is not only advisable, but indispensable. We cannot allow ourselves to pile up treaties full of good intentions and then leave them to the will of God.

- Editorial

http://el-nacional.terra.com.ve

The Jamaica Gleaner

Kingston, Jamaica

"CARICOM backs Cuba in losing cause"

The United States moved to keep Cuba off the field of hemispheric integration during the Third Summit of the Americas here.

But CARICOM (the Caribbean Community), although having its own "blemishes" in its democratic tradition, stood as one in its stance that Cuba must be a part of the integration process.

Nonetheless, by later in the day it was clear that Cuba was effectively excluded when Heads of Government agreed by consensus on a democratic clause which states that countries must be directed by democratic development and benefits of the summit process and free trade would flow only to those countries who subscribe to the clause.

Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, answering questions at a press conference late yesterday afternoon, said that when Cuba had an "acceptable" democracy "then they will be in." . . .

CARICOM spoke with one voice through St. Lucia Prime Minister Kenny Anthony who said that the community had a strong democratic tradition that had been hard won.

"We have had our blemishes," he conceded, but "democracy is a living, breathing thing in the Caribbean." He told hemispheric leaders that the region spoke from the vantage point of having no anxiety about its democratic tradition and no feeling of guilt about its human rights record. . . .

"Democracy can't be imposed. It must be planted and allowed to flower," he insisted. . . .

He stressed that they should be careful therefore not to "cast judgement on our emerging democracies within our hemispheric family."

- News report by Donna Ortega

http://www.

jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/

O Estado de S.Paulo

Sao Paulo, Brazil

"Dangerous Secrets"

These accords could profoundly affect, for good or for ill, the lives of hundreds of millions of people, the operating conditions of businesses of all sizes and, inevitably, the legal order of 34 countries - and 35 if Cuba eventually joins the system.

The promise to publish the negotiating texts is at least an implicit recognition of this. Yet these papers remain out of public reach. And so they will remain, we are told, until translations into the summit's four languages - Portuguese, Spanish, English and French - have been completed.

The Peoples' Summit has jumped ahead of governments, expanding its role beyond simply opposing official policies to become a source of information on government acts, taking on a responsibility that those holding executive power have avoided until now.

(It did so by releasing texts showing an attempt to extend NAFTA's investment provisions to the FTAA) - provisions that go so far as to allow companies to demand compensation for damages supposedly caused by strikes of public demonstrations.

The cases so far have affected not only the governments of Canada and Mexico, but also of the United States. These lawsuits have challenged the normal ability of public authorities to pass laws protecting the environment and natural resources.

The Brazilian government is among those opposing such clauses and Canadian authorities, in recent days, have shown themselves to be opposed to the adoption, within the FTAA, of clauses similar to those in NAFTA.

All the same, this is an example of the kind of problem that would be more easily solved if governments kept the public duly informed.

- Editorial

http://www.estado.estadao.com.br