Free Trade Agreement Almost Complete
The Bush administration may have suffered a setback in its effort to forge a hemisphere-wide free trade agreement, but it is pushing ahead with a smaller deal that would cover five Central American countries.

Negotiators from Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua have been meeting with U.S. officials for over a week in Washington, trying to overcome the final obstacles to a Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA.

They say a deal is within reach and could be completed by next Tuesday. It would remove virtually all trade barriers among the nations over the next decade.

But the agreement is expected to face considerable opposition in the U.S. Congress from some politically potent groups including labor unions, textile makers and the sugar industry.

The plan is meant to help U.S. industries expand their export opportunities in Central America.

To gather support, the administration already announced it will try to add the Dominican Republic to the CAFTA agreement early next year before sending it to Congress for approval.

That approach may win votes in congressional districts with large Dominican immigrant populations, but it isn't swaying opposition from the sugar and textile industries.

"As it now stands, CAFTA would result in the loss of thousands of U.S. apparel and textile jobs," said Mark Levinson, chief economist for the Union of Neddletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees. "CAFTA is good for the big retailers, not for apparel and textile workers."

American growers of sugar cane and sugar beets fear competition would increase if sugar imports from the five CAFTA countries are allowed into the United States without the steep tariffs imposed on sugar imports from other countries.

The five Central American countries currently produce 2 million tons of sugar annually, more than the United States imports.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., contends increased imports from Central America could wipe out the U.S. sugar beet industry and gouge U.S. cane sugar production.

"The sugar industry in our region and the family farms and rural communities it sustains would be devastated," Dorgan said.

The Bush administration, however, sees CAFTA as a stepping stone to a much bigger prize of a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, covering all 34 democracies in the Western Hemisphere.

In talks last month, the administration was forced to accept a watered-down outline for the FTAA that will allow each nation to determine the extent it is willing to lower trade barriers on various politically sensitive industries.

That compromise covered over deep disagreements between the United States and Brazil concerning the scope of the negotiations that were threatening to derail the entire enterprise, which is supposed to conclude by January 2005.

To put more pressure on Brazil and its allies to negotiate as broad a free trade deal as possible, the administration is forging ahead with negotiations on smaller free trade deals such as CAFTA and individual agreements with a number of other Latin American countries.

But the administration's negotiating schedule also includes individual talks with Australia and Morocco, scheduled to be completed in January. It also hopes to complete next year free trade talks with five African countries in the Southern Africa Customs Union.

The administration wants to launch free trade talks next year with Thailand, Panama, Bahrain, Colombia and possibly Ecuador and Bolivia.
 

Costa Rican Youngest Player to Reach Grand Master Status
Grand Masters Thomas Luther, of Germany; Alejandro Ramirez, of Costa Rica; and Vadim Milov, of Switzerland, scored victories in the third round Sunday to share the lead in the 16th annual Carlos Torre Repetto chess tournament.

Luther, playing with the white pieces, defeated International Master Dionisio Aldama, a Cuban-Mexican, in 55 moves against a Sicilian Defense.

Ramirez, 15, also playing with the white pieces, defeated International Master Holden Hernandez of Cuba in 34 moves against a Nimzowitsch Indian Defense. Ramirez is the ninth-youngest player in history to reach Grand Master status.

Milov, playing with the black pieces, defeated International Master Amon Simutowe, of Zambia, in 36 moves using a Queen's Gambit defense.

The three victors share the tournament lead with three points each.

The 12 top-qualified players after five rounds will move on to the second phase of the tournament, in which the top seeds are Alexei Dreev, of Russia; Boris Gelfand of Israel; Liviu Dieter Nisipeanu, of Romania; and Valery Filippov, the 2002 Torre Repetto champion.