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REPORTS: BRAZIL |
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Brazil
Pushes for Flexibility in FTAA Talks
Mario
Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, (IPS) - Flexibility is
the key aspect that Brazil would like
to see incorporated into the Free
Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in
order to take into account the diverse
realities of the 34 countries involved
and enable each one to accept or
reject commitments on the touchiest
issues.
The flexibility sought by Brasilia
would also help those countries with
the most diversified economies deal
with conflicting internal interests
that are difficult to reconcile when
it comes to hammering out a common
national position in the negotiations
on the free trade area to be created
by 2005.
Trade ministers from the 34 countries
negotiating the future continent-wide
trade bloc -- all of the countries in
the hemisphere with the exception of
Cuba -- are meeting this week in
Miami.
Discrepancies have even been felt
within the government in Brazil, where
the ministries of agriculture and
industry are opposed to the line of
action staked out by the foreign
ministry in the FTAA talks.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
had to step into the fray and ratify
Foreign Minister Celso Amorim as head
of the negotiations, while expanding
the participation of delegates from
the ministries in the economic areas.
Agriculture and several competitive
industrial sectors, like steel,
footwear and apparel, want a broad,
ambitious free trade deal in order to
gain greater access to big markets
like the United States and Canada.
Agribusiness was thus upset with the
position defended by the foreign
ministry, which envisions a limited
FTAA that would leave aside the
question of farm subsidies (an issue
the United States says it will only
discuss in the World Trade
Organisation) as well as services,
copyright and patents, and government
procurement -- markets that Brazil is
not interested in opening up at this
time.
The foreign ministry ''is using
agriculture to boycott the FTAA,
providing misleading information when
it says the United States refuses to
discuss subsidies,'' complained
Antonio Donizeti Beraldo, in charge of
international trade in the Brazilian
Confederation of Agriculture and
Livestock (CNA), after the FTAA
negotiations were hung up over
differences between Brasilia and
Washington two weeks ago.
Brazil and the United States are the
co-chairs of the current round of
talks.
''That is a point to be negotiated,''
Gilman Viana Rodrigues, the president
of the CNA Chamber of Foreign Trade,
told IPS by telephone from Miami. ''If
the United States does not reduce its
farm subsidies, it will have to offer
some compensation, because in
negotiations there cannot be just one
winner like in football or war.''
Besides, ''the ultimate goal of all
trade agreements, whether regional or
global, is free trade and the
reduction of protectionism,'' he said.
Brazil's farmers ''want an immediate
opening of the markets,'' but ''they
must understand the situation faced by
industry,'' which would have
difficulties if the tariffs that
protect them were to be slashed in the
immediate future, said Rodrigues,
expressing a vision that is more
national than sectoral in scope.
In the United States, things are the
other way around: industry is pressing
for rapid, broad liberalisation of
trade, and wants Washington to
negotiate the question of subsidies
and other barriers in agriculture.
''Their interests coincide'' with
those of farmers in Brazil, ''but we
have not struck up any alliance,''
said Rodrigues, who underlined the
need to defend all of the country's
interests, as a whole.
''We cannot win on all points at the
expense of everyone else. We must
reconcile the interests of the various
sectors, combining concessions and
gains,'' said Rodrigues, who admitted,
however, that agribusiness products
like sugar, alcohol, cotton, orange
juice and meat are hit especially hard
by U.S. protectionism, which has
hampered their growth in Brazil.
Several of those products, which the
United States and other countries
consider ''sensitive,'' are on the D
list in the FTAA negotiations, which
means import duties are to be phased
out in ''over 10 years,'' whereas the
A list involves the immediate lifting
of tariffs.
But Rodrigues argued that an upper
limit must be set, since ''more than
10 years could mean anything from 10
to 200 years.'' Nor can there be
''absolute flexibility,'' he added,
saying deadlines and timeframes must
be defined, as well as ''gradual ways
to move towards overall liberalisation''
of hemispheric trade.
The flexibility proposed by Brazil,
which would allow for specific
bilateral accords or multilateral
agreements between a few countries,
could give rise to a complex scenario,
but would be a ''good tactic'' to keep
the negotiations moving, Cristina
Pecequilo at the Ibero-American
University Centre in Sao Paulo said in
an interview.
The aim is to ''accommodate'' internal
discrepancies in order to ''discuss
touchier issues in the future,'' while
allowing Brazil ''to maintain its
defensive position, without giving in
to the United States -- but in a
proactive manner, showing a
willingness to negotiate, and avoiding
accusations of trying to hold up the
talks,'' she said.
Flexibility is also necessary in all
negotiations, to create ''specific,
short-term alliances'' like the ones
that currently exist, given the
variety of accords and interests,
Pecequilo added.
One example is the alliance of
developing countries -- the so-called
Group of 20 or G20 -- that emerged on
the occasion of the fifth World Trade
Organisation ministerial conference in
Cancun, Mexico in September, and
continues to press for a reduction of
the farm subsidies shelled out by
governments in the industrialised
world.
With respect to the sectors in Brazil
that are most interested in the FTAA,
Pecequilo noted that some branches of
industry are ''even more anxious than
farmers'' to reach a broad accord,
''with the hope of making headway in
the U.S. market.''
The problem, she said, is that the
United States obstructs imports of
Brazil's most competitive products
through the use of non-tariff trade
barriers like measures to prevent the
''dumping'' of products at prices
deemed artificially low, which the
United States refuses to dismantle in
the FTAA.
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