US-Regional Agreements with Latin America - The Long and Unsuccessful Saga of CAFTA and the FTAA (original) (raw)
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The Current State of the FTAA Negotiations at the Turn of the Millennium
Law and Business Review of the Americas, 2000
the thirty-five nations in the Western Hemisphere (all except Cuba) signed off on the creation of a basic structure for conducting formal FTAA negotiations. Since then, negotiations have proceeded actively toward the conclusion of an agreement for the creation of a hemispheric-wide free trade area by the year 2005. This paper reviews the achievements to date of the FTAA negotiations and attempts to shed light on the progress realized so far in the FTAA as of the turn of the millennium. In the following sections, the paper summarizes the background of the FTAA as well as the substantive issues and work of the various negotiating groups and other committees in light of the objectives of the San Jose and Toronto Ministerial meetings.'
The FTAA as a Three-level Bargaining Game
Problemas del Desarrollo. Revista Latinoamericana de EconomÃa
This paper applies Putnam’s (1993) seminal work on negotiations as a two level game, to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations process. The paper compares the domestic ratification processes with the existing web of regional and bilateral trade agreements for insights into the relative bargaining strength and key issues for the most important economies in the hemisphere: the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Mexico. This paper delivers important insights into how the existing international and domestic legal and political context will affect the dynamic shape of FTAA negotiations, with the aim of finding strategies by which Latin American countries (LACs) can maximize their bargaining power.
Negotiating the Free Trade Area of the Americas
2011
The book brings the first detailed historical account of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations. It examines the US and Brazilian foreign policy making in a historical perspective, and highlights how ideas and beliefs, instead of material facts only, impacted on the demise of the negotiations. http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/view/10.1057/9780230119055
Free Trade Area of the Americas
The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization, 2012
In the summer of 2001, business and citizen groups geared up for another battle over Fast Track in Congress. Fast Track trade authority gives the President sole authority for negotiating new trade agreements and limits Congress' role to a yes or no vote on the implementing legislation with no ability to amend the legislation. The Bush administration has announced that it wants Fast Track in order to negotiate the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a proposed expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to all the countries in the Western Hemisphere, except Cuba. The debate surrounding Fast Track makes analysis of the draft FTAA text extremely timely. Negotiations on the FTAA were launched in Miami in December 1994 at the first Summit of the Americas. There, the trade ministers of thirty-four South, Central and North American and Caribbean nations agreed to a proposal to establish a comprehensive, hemisphere-wide trading bloc no later than 2005. At the second Summit of the Americas held in Santiago, Chile in April 1998, the trade ministers created a Trade Negotiations Committee with a variety of working groups to begin negotiating rules regarding agriculture, services, investment, disputes settlement, intellectual property, government procurement, subsidies, anti-dumping policy, competition policy and market access.
2001
The Issue: The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is in the process of being created. Using existing free trade regimes and their dispute resolution mechanisms (DRMs) as examples, it is clear that such regimes often overlook non-trade related considerations, such as the environment. This trend will likely continue under the FTAA unless its DRM differs significantly from those of existing trade regimes. Research questions: 1. How do the current trade DRMs of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the World Trade Organization (GATT/WTO) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) function? 2. What weaknesses in the processes of these existing DRMs prevent "good" decisions from being reached? 3. How can these processes be improved upon to provide DRMs for the FTAA that will result in "good" decisions? Methodology: A literature review was conducted to broaden our understanding of how the DRMs of WTO/GATT, NAFTA, and the future FTAA function, and to reveal weaknesses in these mechanisms. A list of potential recommendations for the DRM of the FTAA was drafted and brought before individuals from diverse areas of interest and expertise in interviews to gauge their responses and include additional recommendations. The pros and cons of each recommendation, as revealed through the literature and interviews, were considered in determining their desirability.