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Latin American Connection
Going South?
Florida watches nervously as a neo-populist tide rolls through Latin America, the state's most important trade region
The future For the time being, Latin America seems to be "taking a breather from free trade and globalization," says Mc- Coy. "There's nobody out there with a coherent story about why we should be doing it who is also willing to make the political sacrifices." Some Florida FTAA boosters insist the dream of a hemispheric trade bloc will someday come true, Miami headquarters and all. But few experts and executives who do business in Latin America believe that anymore.
Jorge L. Arrizurieta, Florida's former FTAA president who this year joined Akerman Senterfitt as chief of the firm's international policy group, is trying to build support for a slimmed-down trade agreement that doesn't include all the countries in the hemisphere -- the so-called "FTAA of the willing." The willing, based on a count at the IV Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina, last fall, includes 29 nations but not heavyweights Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela. Other countries, such as Bolivia, are sure to join the holdouts given new leadership. "No matter the number of willing nations that emerge," Arrizurieta says, "a movement should press forward with those who see the benefits of trade while keeping the door open to outside nations who will eventually wish they were in the partnership."
"An ambiguous attitude toward property and contracts, coupled with the sudden wealth arising from oil, gas and commodities in the region, makes for a volatile mix."
Arrizurieta says the FTAA should never have been viewed as an all-or-nothing proposition -- perhaps the mistake of its early enthusiasts. The very process, he says, led to crucial trading partnerships that now encompass much of the hemisphere anyway, including Mexico, Chile and the nations under the U.S.-Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement, known as DR-CAFTA (although Costa Rica has yet to ratify it). Other trade deals are under way between the U.S. and Colombia and the U.S. and Peru -- neither of which has made its way past Congress yet.
