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It has been more than ten years since the heads of state of the thirty-four democratically elected governments in the Western Hemisphere launched negotiations for a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the most ambitious foreign policy initiative the region has seen in decades. The 1994 Miami Summit of the Americas gave birth to the FTAA concept, raising expectations that the long-standing desire for hemispheric integration seemed possible at last. Since the Miami Summit, significant progress has been achieved, even though macroeconomic problems and political crises have plagued several of the participating countries. Despite the effort of FTAA leaders to keep the initiative alive, the originally agreed 2005 deadline for completion of the FTAA has passed and negotiations remain stalled. To understand the evolution of the FTAA over the last decade and the current impasse, it is best to analyze it in two stages: the period 1994–2000 and the period 2001–04.1 During the first six years of the FTAA, from 1994 to 2000, no real negotiations took place. The reason is simple: with the 2005 target date for the agreement’s completion so distant in the future, no country was willing to make a serious offer, knowing in advance that all substantive discussions would have to wait for the closing stage of the negotiations. Moreover, the most important players, with the exception of Canada and Chile, had other priorities during this period. 91 Beyond the FTAA Perspectives for Hemispheric Integration jaime zabludovsky and sergio gómez lora 5 05-8201-8 ch5.qxd 7/13/07 4:31 PM Page 91 In the United States, after the approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993 and the conclusion of the eight-year Uruguay Round negotiations in 1994, the Clinton administration rested on these laurels for the remainder of the 1990s. The United States, in other words, basically abdicated the leadership role that it had long played in international trade negotiations. Opposition to further trade liberalization from labor unions, environmentalists, and key actors in the Democratic Party made it difficult for the Clinton trade policy team to maintain the momentum it had gathered to pass the NAFTA bill. The collapse of the World Trade Organization ’s (WTO’s) Trade Ministerial in Seattle in November 1999 and President Clinton’s continued failure to obtain the fast-track negotiating authority from the U.S. Congress are just two of the problems faced by his administration in this area. For the Mercosur (Southern Cone Common Market) countries (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay), the FTAA was not a high priority during the 1990s, because most of them were concerned with their own macroeconomic and political crises and their own regional integration efforts. Early on in the FTAA process, Mexico, having secured privileged access to the U.S. market via NAFTA, had little incentive to share this privilege with other countries in the region.2 Mexico has instead used the advantage of its NAFTA membership to advance at the bilateral level, developing an ambitious network of trade agreements in the hemisphere. Meanwhile, Canada and Chile, although they maintained an active commitment to the FTAA process, also took advantage of the vacuum left by the U.S. lack of leadership to sign free trade agreements (FTAs) with regional partners. The second stage of the FTAA process started in 2001. Upon assuming office that year, the new administration of George W. Bush sought to revive U.S. leadership in trade negotiations. It invested the political capital needed to obtain the fast-track negotiating authority (now called Trade Promotion Authority, or TPA), which enables Congress to vote up or down on a trade bill without amending it, and the Bush trade policy team provided the leadership to launch a new multilateral round of trade negotiations in Doha in 2001. Last but not least, the United States implemented the competitive negotiations strategy, which sought to address some of the FTAA rules that appeared to hamper progress but which also included the launching of a series of bilateral negotiations with a broad geographical range of countries. On the need to revive the FTAA process, in 1998 in San José, Costa Rica, the FTAA countries had agreed on the following language: “The initiation, conduct and outcome of the negotiations of the FTAA shall be treated as 92 Jaime Zabludovsky and Sergio Gómez Lora 05-8201-8 ch5.qxd 7/13/07 4:31 PM Page 92 [3.21.97.61] Project MUSE...

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