The United States is offering to eliminate many tariffs and trade barriers in the negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a $13-trillion market of 34 countries and nearly 800 million people.
The move comes as the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery meets in St. Lucia to make a Feb. 14 deadline to submit its draft initial offers for tariff liberalisation under the FTAA. The Bahamas High Commissioner to CARICOM, A. Leonard Archer is representing the country.
The United States Embassy in Nassau on Tuesday said that the U.S. is offering to eliminate import duties on the majority of industrial and agricultural imports from the Western Hemisphere immediately when FTAA comes into force, and is offering broad access to its services, investment and government procurement sectors.
In addition, it is offering that textiles and apparel imports from the region would be duty-free in the U.S. just five years after the FTAA takes effect, provided other countries reciprocate.
“It is our shared hemispheric vision that free trade and openness benefits everyone and provides opportunity, prosperity and hope to all our peoples. President Bush has made the FTAA a top U.S. priority, and today we deliver with bold proposals to lower barriers throughout the region,” said U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick. “The United States has created a detailed roadmap for free trade in the Western Hemisphere οΎ– we’ve put all our tariffs on the table because free trade benefits all and brings us closer together as neighbours.”
The U.S. offer sets an important benchmark in the market access negotiations, and demonstrates U.S. leadership as negotiations move into a critical and substantive phase. To encourage other FTAA countries to make equally ambitious market access proposals, the U.S. offer only extends to those FTAA countries that put their own offers on the table.
Over the next several months, the United States and other FTAA countries will respond to each other’s initial offers and begin negotiations in preparation for the Miami ministerial meeting in November, which the United States is co-chairing with Brazil.
The U.S. offer covers five key areas of the negotiations: consumer and industrial goods; agriculture; services; investment; and government procurement.
“The U.S. is already a very open market.
The FTAA will benefit American farmers, workers, consumers and businesses by reducing high tariffs and trade barriers throughout the rest of the Western Hemisphere, while promoting regional economic growth and integration.
The United States shares a hemispheric responsibility with our co-chair Brazil in helping to lead these negotiations to success, and we look forward to building on our good work and cooperation,” said Mr. Zoellick.
The U.S. offers provide different rates of reductions in trade barriers throughout the region to reflect the wide disparity in economic size and development among FTAA countries.
The 34 countries had earlier agreed that differences in the levels and development and size of economies should be taken into account in the developments of the market access offers.
The United States has consulted extensively with Congress and trade advisory groups over several months during the drafting of these offers.
U.S. FTAA Offer: Government Procurement
* The United States offers, and seeks from other FTAA parties, strong and substantive procedural commitments that ensure transparency and effective access in government procurement.
* The United States presents two offers, a basic offer and an enhanced offer for certain less developed countries.
* The basic offer, similar to treatment currently enjoyed by NAFTA partners, would give firms from FTAA countries the non-discriminatory ability to compete for contracts for nearly all the goods and services purchased by 51 U.S. federal government agencies.
* The enhanced offer, made to CARICOM nations, would offer access to the purchases of an expanded list of U.S. federal agencies, some 79 in all.
These additional entities already are included in the U.S. FTA agreement with Chile.
* The offers apply to all the goods, services and construction services purchased by the entities listed in the offers, with limited reservations. Use of this so-called “negative list” is the most effective way to ensure broad market access.
By Lindsay Thompson, The Nassau Guardian
