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Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2002 08:50:12 +0100
From: "Hermann Maiba" <globalsolidarity
gmx.net>
Miami to host talks on hemispheric trade
BY JANE BUSSEY
jbusseyherald.com
QUITO - The next round of high-level negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas will be in Miami next fall, trade ministers decided Friday as they concluded the seventh round of talks toward that goal.
“I look forward to hosting you in Miami next year,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick told the packed room of trade officials at the closing ceremony of the trade talks.
Picking Miami for the site of the next gathering of trade ministers -- probably in November 2003 -- is expected to strengthen Miami's bid to become the home of the permanent secretariat, or bureaucracy, of the FTAA.
“The big prize is the secretariat,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas said Friday in Miami. “We'll have a real opportunity to shine and show we can put this sort of thing on.”
William Talbert, president and chief executive of the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, noted the trade gathering may pale in numbers when compared with other conventions here. The trade group is expected to bring 5,000 people, Talbert said. Microsoft's 2001 convention attracted 12,000.
“The issue here is not size. It's importance,” Talbert said. “As the process gets closer to the ultimate decision [in 2005 on where] the permanent secretariat is going to be, it's terribly significant we have that meeting here.”
As the Quito meeting adjourned, Zoellick said he was optimistic that negotiators would conclude a trade deal on schedule by 2005.
If completed, the FTAA would be the largest free-trade area in the world, encompassing 34 countries with a combined population of 800 million.
But Brazil, the key player in Latin America for the hemispheric talks, is currently in a transition to a new leftist government headed by President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Add to that the economic slowdown in the region, Argentina's financial implosion and growing political instability, and the trade agreement is on an uneasy footing.
The biggest disagreement remains over the issue of U.S. domestic farm subsidies and high tariffs on agricultural products such as citrus.
That's one of Florida's main industries, which would face direct competition with Brazil if tariffs were lowered.
The central demand of Latin Americans on trade, repeated at every meeting, is that the United States open its borders to Latin agricultural products.
Rather than any specific points on ending the deadlock, the Quito Declaration announced that the agricultural issues would be taken up in the FTAA talks and the World Trade Organization round of negotiations, where talks include Europe and Asia.
Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Laffer, who handles trade, acknowledged how intractable the task was to agree on agriculture: “What we have to do is a very easy task, which is to square the circle.”
If they can square the circle, finding a home for the bureaucracy to run it is the next step.
But no one actually knows what shape the secretariat will take.
Former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris likened it to the huge European Union bureaucracy established in Brussels.
But estimates of the FTAA secretariat employment range from 100 to 200 jobs.
The North American Free Trade Agreement has no central location for its business affairs.
Instead, NAFTA is run through “virtual” offices, with dispute settlement panels taking place anywhere and the almost invisible labor and environmental units handled by a few employees.
One idea is that the secretariat would be an arm of the Inter-American Development Bank, itself under the Organization of American States.
Panama, Miami and Atlanta are working hard to win the prize -- whatever it might be.
Miami hosted a breakfast Wednesday morning for 100 people from Miami, business executives and local officials from the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Trade Representative's Office.
Panama threw a three-hour reception Tuesday night for all of the participants in the Business Forum of the Americas, a three-day meeting of some 900 business leaders.
Panama's Ballet Foclorico Nacional performed, and hosts passed out ceviche and the national drink, Seco Herrerano.
The next day, Atlanta hosted a luncheon for 1,500, which included reading of a letter from former President Jimmy Carter.
Carter took a swipe at Miami, suggesting visitors “might find time to sit on the front porch in a rocking chair sipping a cool drink with friends and neighbors. . . . Moments like these will make your visit personally meaningful in a way that resort tourism simply cannot match.”
Regional business leaders are interested in the secretariat site, often for personal reasons.
“I am rooting for Atlanta,” said Samuel Gleiser Katz, president of Peru's FTAA private sector commission. “I studied there, and all my children studied there, too.”
Brazilian business executive Juan Manuel Quiros smiled at the city rivalry.
“I am the wrong person to ask. I am enormously fond of Miami,” Quiros said. He studied at the University of Miami.
Herald staff writer Douglas Hanks III contributed to this report.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/4426013.htm
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