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The United States is committed to completing negotiations on a hemispheric Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by 2005, according to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick. However, Zoellick also warned recently that if the negotiations, which involve 34 countries, fall behind schedule or stall, then the Bush administration will negotiate bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) with any Latin American states that want to accelerate the process of expanding trade with the United States.
In effect, the Bush administration already is emphasizing bilateral deals over broader and more complex regional negotiations in Latin America. For instance, U.S. negotiators expect to wrap up a bilateral trade deal with Chile in 2002 and to start negotiations with five Central American countries in 2003.
Now that U.S. President George W. Bush has trade promotion authority to negotiate deals that Congress can approve but not amend, countries lined up for bilateral trade agreements include Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay and the Dominican Republic. Argentina likely will seek a bilateral trade deal in 2003, after that country elects a new president.
From a U.S. perspective, building a network of bilateral trade agreements in Latin America currently might be perceived as more advantageous in the near term than regional or multilateral trade negotiations.
U.S. negotiators can control the pace, content and direction of bilateral negotiations with individual countries more easily than they can with larger negotiating frameworks. In effect, Chilean sources familiar with the bilateral discussions currently under way with Washington claim that USTR negotiators are making tough demands, offering fewer concessions than Chile would like and excluding in-depth discussion of agriculture, import-sensitive industries, dumping rules and other issues that are politically sensitive in Washington.
"Whatever trade agreement Chile finally signs with the United States will not be as good, from Chile's perspective, as the deal Mexico got under the North American Free Trade Agreement," a South American recently source told Stratfor.
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