The United States risks alienating Brazil as a linchpin in the Free Trade Area of the Americas by making piecemeal trade agreements throughout the hemisphere, experts said Wednesday at The Herald's Americas Conference.
"We can't load up on Brazil," said Eric P. Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas and a participant in a panel discussion on the FTAA, a proposed multilateral trade pact among 34 nations of the Americas.
"Relations with Brazil," he added, "are far more important and go way beyond trade and investment."
Nations also must realize that free trade is the region's last resort to generate prosperity, panelists said on the second, and final, day of the conference at The Biltmore in Coral Gables.
The United States and Brazil, which are co-chairing the FTAA talks, are at a standoff over, among other points, Brasilia's demand that Washington eliminate subsidies to farmers. Many observers say the stalemate could delay the January 2005 implementation of the still to be negotiated pact, which would eliminate tariffs among member nations.
The impasse could even sink the plan.
Farnsworth called the United States' pursuit of trade agreements with more eager partners, such as Chile and a coalition of Central American nations, "a bold strategy" but one "not without risk."
"The U.S. and Brazil," he said, "need to find a way to turn to each other, not on each other. The FTAA is not perfect, but it's better than the alternatives, which simply don't exist."
Another panelist, J. Antonio Villamil, chief executive of the Washington Economics Group in Miami, called the FTAA crucial to making the Americas competitive against the expanding commercial might of China and the European Union.
"The EU is bringing in lower-cost producers from Eastern Europe, and that will be a critical challenge to us," Villamil said. "The increasing power of China is also a major competitor to countries in the Americas."
Another panelist, Jorge Arrizurieta, who is leading Miami's attempt to win the permanent headquarters of the FTAA, noted that the decision about the site will be made through a "consensus process," not a direct vote.
"It's being negotiated as part of this massive agreement, just as agriculture is," Arrizurieta said.
But Trinidad and Tobago Consul Harold Robertson, who was in the audience, voiced concern that this might mean that the location would be used as a bargaining chip by the region's biggest players in closed-door negotiations.
"We are in favor of a democratic and transparent process of voting, not a consensus," Robertson said.
Miami and Trinidad's Port-of-Spain are two contenders for the secretariat site. The Caribbean nation's capital has the backing of the 14 Caricom island nations and claims to also have the support of Costa Rica and Venezuela.
Attorney Reginald H. Lobosky, a member of the Bahamas Trade Commission, asked Arrizurieta if Miami would be willing to parcel out some of the secretariat's functions should it win the contest. For example, he said, Nassau, "an eastern suburb of Miami," could be the site of the FTAA's dispute-resolution center.
"It would be beneficial for the Bahamas, because it is so near to Florida, to have the secretariat here," Lobosky said. "But the Bahamas could make a bid to share some of that with Miami."
Arrizurieta called the idea "politically astute" and added: "I don't know the practicality of it."
Not everyone was gung-ho on the prospects of free trade. In a small foretaste of the demonstrations that are expected to engulf downtown Miami next month during a meeting of hemispheric trade ministers, about two dozen anti-FTAA protesters tried to enter the conference Wednesday to request that they be admitted free of charge. The Biltmore's security force refused to let them in.
"This is what the FTAA is about," said Eric Rubin, director of Florida Fair Trade Coalition. "The people have no say."
At a press conference on the grounds of the Coral Gables Congregational Church, across from the hotel, coalition members said they opposed free-trade agreements because, among other reasons, they gave corporations too much control, resulted in the loss of millions of jobs and fomented environmental damage.
Herald Publisher Alberto Ibarg�en noted that the group could have requested a pass to the conference ahead of time.
By Christina Hoag, The Miami Herald
