Watered-down pan-American free trade plans could hurt Latin America's big

[Socialist Christian]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1520&ncid=1520&e=7&u=/afp/20031121/pl_afp/latam_ftaa_trade_reax_031121204053

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WASHINGTON (AFP) - The rise of many left-leaning governments in Latin America helped undercut US grand plans for what would have been the world's largest free trade area -- and the region's bigger economies could take the worst loss, analysts said.

Ministers working on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations wrapped up work late Thursday with an interim deal that dramatically scales back the original plan for a free trade bloc of 34 nations agreed to back in 1994. It was to take effect in 2005.


"This agreement was not what the US wanted, and what originally had been set as the goal, which was a free trade agreement. It is one step down, a consolation prize," Antonio Jorge, an economics professor at Florida International University, said from Miami.


"Perhaps back in 1994 ... there was less political disagreement in the (Americas) than there is now. Now we have more nationalist, left-of-center influences in Latin America than was the case back in 1994," Jorge said, mentioning rising influence by the left in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela.