Growing American protectionism threatens to slow efforts to create a 34-nation free trade zone throughout the Americas, Canadian trade minister Sergio Marchi said last week.
He told a House of Commons committee March 3 that it is unlikely the United States Congress will give the administration fast track authority to negotiate a new trade deal before 2001, if then.
And without that negotiating authority, the U.S. will be reluctant to make many commitments or to become too deeply involved in the Free Trade Area of the Americas talks.
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So will other countries.
“If it is left too long, the FTAA train will slow down,” Marchi told MPs. “I don’t think it will stop or go off the track, but without the U.S. fully engaged, it will be slowed.”
Marchi went before the committee to describe what he considers the benefits of a new free trade deal stretching from southern Chile to the Arctic – a proposal first promoted by American president Ronald Reagan when the federal Liberals were still in opposition and opposing the free trade deal.
Marchi said an FTAA would give Canadian exporters access to the largest free trade zone in the world, populated by 800 million potential consumers. Already, Canada exports $4 billion worth of goods to countries in the Americas outside the United States and Mexico.
He said Canada’s central role in promoting and helping lead the talks will give it a place “on the ground floor” of the more-united Americas.
“Canada is seen as a balance” against the powerful influence of the U.S., he said.
Negotiations started last year and are supposed to be completed by 2005. Canada is chairing the talks until the end of the year and will host a leaders’ summit in 2000.
During the meeting, Bloc QuŽbecois MP Monique Guay wondered if the FTAA negotiations may end up “subverting” World Trade Organization talks, set to begin late this year and to run until 2003 or 2004.
Marchi said regional trade blocs working inside the WTO rules can help, rather than hurt. “The government sees it as complementary to the WTO.”
He said a successful FTAA negotiation would create three major world trading regions – the Americas, the European Union and the Asia-Pacific region.
Canada would be a member of two of them, with close historic and economic ties to the third, the EU.
