FTAA stalls at Summit of the Americas.

President Bush and the leaders of 33 nations met for two days at the fourth Summit of the Americas in Argentina, but the conference ended on November 5 without any significant progress toward agreement on the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Plans for the FTAA, launched at the first Summit of the Americas in Miami in 1994, have repeatedly called for implementation of the program by the end of 2005, but that timetable has been repeatedly dashed. Patterned after the European Union, the FTAA would establish a hemispheric trading bloc that would include the countries of North and South America and the Caribbean. Following the EU example, the FTAA architects plan to expand the scope of the pact far beyond the advertised trade issues to include, ultimately, regional governance over virtually all economic, social, and political matters. And like the EU, the entity envisioned by the FTAA promoters would dissolve national borders and subject the member countries to a hemispheric mini-UN with real legislative, executive, and judicial powers.

Mexico and Canada (our NAFTA partners) and 27 other nations sided with the U.S. at the summit in desiring to continue negotiations toward finalizing the FTAA. However, a bloc of five countries--Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Uruguay, and Paraguay--led by left-wing presidents is barring the way. Venezuela's self-avowed Marxist president Hugo Chavez, a close ally of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, said he wants to "bury the FTAA for good." But leaders of the other four nations are not unalterably opposed: they say they will await the outcome of the World Trade Organization meeting in Hong Kong in December, where they intend to challenge the U.S. on agricultural issues, including farm subsidies. President Bush has also indicated he is looking forward to using the WTO summit to reactivate the FTAA.