Striking a deal with the Americas.

Thousands of protesters took over Quebec City to demonstrate against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and globalization in general last April. If they could have seen the FTAA draft agreement produced later in July, they might have stayed at home.

More than 430 pages long, the draft created by 34 nations working to form a hemisphere-wide trading block has two types of text: regular to indicate language agreed upon, and bracketed to "indicate that different points of view do exist on the text," as the document's footnote states.

The FTAA draft is a sea of brackets, and suggests there is little upon which the hemisphere agrees with regards to trade. Many people ask if the 2005 target for ratification of the treaty is now attainable, as it was first set at the Summit of the Americas in 1994, when there was much greater public support for free trade.

In fact, given the status of the economies of South America, there are questions being asked as to whether an agreement in the foreseeable future is possible at all, to say nothing of George W. Bush's attempts to have agreements signed before the deadline. What critics call "Nafta on steroids" is in danger of becoming Nafta smothered in ink.

Political conflicts within each of the potential signatory nations are of course the FTAA's greatest hurdle. Opposition to free trade in the United States poses the single greatest threat to the treaty's ratification, and centers around granting the U.S. president "fast-track" authority (now called "trade-promotion authority") to push trade legislation to congressional vote while shielding it from legislative amendment.

"The United States needs to grant trade-promotion authority," for the FTAA to have a chance of ratification, says Jeffrey Schott, a Senior Fellow of the Institute of International Economics and author of several regional trade studies. "If the president invests appropriate capital and works with free-trade-minded democrats, it will happen."

Whether the powers will be granted again has been called into question as anti free-trade sentiment grows among U.S. labor and environmental groups.

Politics outside the United States is also of concern.

"Domestic political problems are the largest impediment to free-trade efforts," says Banco Santander Central Hispano Chief Economist for Latin America Chip Brown. "And 'globalization' is shopworn as a political theme in many countries."

Nowhere is this more pronounced than in South America's largest trading block. The Mercosur nations--Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay--are currently suffering the effects of Argentina's crisis, but have been in a funk about their trading block since 1998.

Mercosur's trade grew by four times since its creation in 1991, but has fallen in the last three years despite the fact that most trade within the block is now tariff-free. As Argentina's economy faltered, Mercosur members started to move against segments of the custom's union, to reestablish some tariffs in an effort to bolster domestic markets.

As Mercosur wavers, the prospects for a swift integration of the Americas into a free-trade block dims, and a much more arduous task begins. Bringing countries into the Nafta framework one at a time, as Chile prefers for its own sake, would likely push back the completion of a regional trade block by years.

"One country at a time brought into Nafta will be the way the Americas free-trade area progresses," says Scotiabank Economist Adrienne Warren. But signing a series of bi-lateral deals will mean that there will be different, and potentially divisive, terms for each signatory.

Nafta countries cannot afford to allow the rest of the region to cool to FTAA. The European Union made a proposal to Mercosur in July which would dismantle tariffs on E1.9 billion in agricultural products and E4.1 billion in industrial products over the next ten years. This would serve to substantially increase trade between Mercosur and the EU, potentially leaving Nafta nations in the cold.

Michael Kleinberg is a former Mexico-City based reporter and freelance writer. He is currently an assistant vice president with Daniels & Associates, a Denver-based investment bank specializing in the telecommunications industries.