The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is facing an uncertain fate after a failure to reach an agreement on how to advance the FTAA. While President Bush would have liked to see a general agreement on the spirit of the FTAA, there was no agreement either on the substance of the FTAA or on a date to resume negotiations. Brazil was also successful in its efforts to delay discussion of the FTAA until after a substantive discussion of farm subsidies, although it is unclear whether such a discussion will be had as part of the FTAA or the stalled Doha round of the World Trade Organization (WTO)
The discussion inside the Summit was no doubt influenced by protests both in Mar del Plata and around the hemisphere over the weekend. Moreover, the protest movement, which began without allies inside the Summit, has benefited from the vocal opposition to the FTAA by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Brazillian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. After this weekend’s Summit and the failure of the FTAA to go into affect this year , it is seeming increasingly likely that movement against the FTAA, which became publicly known nearly five years ago in Quebec City at the 2001 Summit of the Americas, may soon be celebrating a major victory against a corporate globalization.
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