WorldCity Business Magazine

Place your bets on CAFTA and FTAA

by Ken Roberts

Four years ago, White & Case, one of the world’s largest law firms, opened its first U.S. trade practice office outside of Washington, D.C.

They opened it in Miami. David Bond, a young attorney then living in Mexico, was brought up to lead what is now a four-attorney practice.

Miami made sense for one primary reason, he explained to me over lunch recently: The city would likely be the secretariat for the Free Trade Area of the Americas. To a law firm, that sounded like billable hours. (To a Miami-based media company focused on international business, it sounded pretty good, too.)

What a difference four years makes.

The deadline for passage of the FTAA slipped by in January with barely a whimper. A far less ambitious free trade pact between the United States and Central America and the Dominican Republic appears all but doomed.

President Bush’s “fast-track” authority, which expires at the end of June, would certainly be on the ropes but for one fact: It renews automatically for two years unless voted down, which is not likely to happen.

Is there a realistic chance to put a meaningful FTAA treaty in front of the U.S. Congress in two years? Is there hope when, as a high-powered Florida delegation was visiting Brazil to attempt to jump-start the stalled talks, President Lula proclaims that the treaty has been off the table for more than a year? Is there hope when a Tampa-area state legislator is quoted questioning whether relatively meager state funds allocated to Florida FTAA is money well-spent?

Yes, there is hope, says Chuck Cobb.

Cobb, a highly successful businessman, a former U.S. ambassador and currently a driving force behind the state’s efforts to secure Miami as the secretariat, is perhaps more optimistic than I am, and certainly more optimistic than most. DR-CAFTA will pass, This he predicted in a recent phone call, initiated because of frustration with a lack of media coverage of more positive comments coming out of Brazil’s government following Lula’s comments.

My bet is it won’t. I hope that I am wrong. But I am willing to bet that the U.S. Congress will have a relatively meaningful FTAA treaty before it within 24 months, and that White & Case’s vision will prove to have been correct.

The treaty won’t be perfect, nothing like originally envisioned, at least not initially. It might have gaps that infuriate the Brazilians, in sugar, citrus and cotton policy, and it might have gaps that infuriate the United States, in intellectual property and Customs uniformity, for example.

But it will be symbolically significant and, if the business community gets its act together, will provide an excellent opportunity to talk about the benefits to the American people of free trade. Too many Americans today think like Lou Dobbs.

We will certainly be tracking the developments in WorldCity and, I am proud to announce, at our new quarterly event series, TransWorld TradeLinks, which will focus on the intersection of policy, economics and trade in the global economy, from a South Florida perspective. The first event is next month, timed to coincide with the release of first-quarter trade statistics.

They will show that South Florida’s trade with the world is on pace to sail pass $60 billion for the first time ever, something that only 10 Customs districts in the country had ever done before last year.

There’s always reason, and room, for hope.