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FTAA OverviewThe Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is a trade agreement currently under negotiation that would expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to include 31 additional nations in the Western Hemisphere. This massive expansion is currently being negotiated without meaningful public or Congressional input. The FTAA would not only extend the failed policies of the NAFTA which have eroded living standards, undermined workers rights, devastated family farms, and empowered corporations to challenge domestic public interest laws, but could also include new provisions to severely restrict the ability of federal, state, and local governments throughout the hemisphere to regulate both public and private services, or to provide essential public services.
The effort to bind the economies of the Western Hemisphere into a single free trade agreement began at the Summit of the Americas, in December of 1994 in Miami, Florida. It was at the Summit that heads of state and governments of 34 countries in the region- all nations in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean except Cuba- agreed to complete negotiations for a Free Trade Area of the Americas by 2005. Unfortunately, the public and most Members of Congress are only vaguely aware this agreement is being negotiated, and their input has not been taken into account. Corporate interests, however, are actively involved; under the trade advisory committee system, over 500 corporate representatives have security clearance and access to FTAA documents while only a handful of civil society representatives have been given clearance.
The FTAA would accelerate the global “race to the bottom” initiated under NAFTA: with the FTAA, exploited workers in Mexico would be forced to ‘compete’ with even more desperate workers in Haiti, Bolivia or Guatemala, as multinational corporations move in and out of the region with ease. This “race to the bottom” would also be mirrored for small farmers throughout the hemisphere as the devastating effects of NAFTA on commodity prices and concentration are amplified.
In addition to including the extremely problematic investor-to-state provisions from NAFTA’s Chapter 11, the FTAA includes provisions on services and procurement which go far beyond those in NAFTA in terms of limiting the regulatory authority of Federal, state, and local governments, and boosting the power of corporations to challenge public interest regulations.
The FTAA functions through nine negotiating committees: agriculture, intellectual property rights, investment, government procurement, market access, services, subsidies and anti-dumping and countervailing duties, competition policy, and dispute settlement. These committees meet monthly, or more frequently to push forward negotiations and establish commitments. Currently in the “offers” phase of negotiations in several committees, FTAA negotiators are responding to ‘requests’ by other countries, and establishing which sectors and regulations will be placed on the table or excluded from coverage by FTAA rules. . The next FTAA Trade Ministerial will take place in Miami, Florida November 20 and 21, 2003. Click here for more information about the Miami Mobilization. Negotiators hope to have a final text ready for signing by December, 2004, with a final deadline for implementation of the agreement December 31, 2005. Under Fast Track negotiating authority, if the FTAA reaches completion, Congress will only be allowed an up or down vote on the entire package, with limited debate, and no amendments allowed.
The FTAA has sparked widespread opposition throughout the Americas. Massive demonstrations have been held in Canada, Ecuador, and most recently, nearly 10 million Brazilians voted in a plebecite to withdraw from negotiations. To combat this, U.S. negotiators have begun a “divide and conquer” strategy in which they lock in bilateral agreements with potential FTAA countries in order to facilitate the passage of the FTAA and set a “high” bar in terms of the rights granted to corporations in the agreement. The Central American Free trade Agreement (CAFTA) and the US-Chile Free Trade Agreement are two such examples of this strategy.
Fact Sheet: What is the FTAA? Citizens Trade Campaign
Everything you need to know to stop NAFTA expansion Public Citizen
Unveiling “NAFTA for the Americas” Public Citizen
Top Ten Reasons to Oppose the FTAAM Global Exchange
What's Wrong with the FTAA? Witness for Peace
Five Environmental Reasons to Oppose the FTAA Sierra Club
FTAA Fact Sheet Communications Workers of America
After the FTAA: Lessons from Europe for the Americas
Institute for Policy Studies, June 2005
Trade Blocs, Neoliberalism, and the Quality of LIfe in Latin America
UCLA International Institute, June 16, 2004
Puebla is the new Cancún: popular pressure triumphs
The Hemispheric Social Alliance, February 2004
A Citizen’s Critique of the November draft of the FTAA
Hemispheric Social Alliance, January 2003
Original FTAA Vision Scrapped As People Pour Into Miami For Anti-Free Trade Protest The International Forum on Globalization
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