A History of the FTAA

This chapter will provide a history of the negotiations with a particular focus on the evolution of the growing crisis of authority in the Americas. Tracing the history of the negotiations will enable an analysis of what took place during the decade in which the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) was negotiated in view of Gramsci’s concepts of conjunctural and organic movements with respect to developments at the negotiation table and in relation to the broader context of the social relations of the hemisphere. This will thus provide a measure for the innumerable developments that took place throughout the negotiations, which is a task made all the more difficult by the complex and multileveled institutional infrastructure of the negotiations. This chapter will, therefore, contextualize these events by putting them in relation to the evolving social relations of the hemisphere and the specific institutional contexts in which they took place. What emerges is a portrait of the FTAA characterized by conflict and cooperation, consensus and disagreement amid fluid social relations and institutions. In the end, the growing crisis of authority regarding US leadership based, in large part, on neoliberal policies in the hemisphere coalesced the fluidity of positions into two irreconcilable camps that brought the negotiations to an unsuccessful end.

This book’s central argument is that the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) was initiated not only as a potential agreement to further liberalize and integrate the Western Hemisphere under the leadership of the American state but that it also became a space where that project came to be challenged. The first challenge came from the cautious attitude exhibited by Brazil in the early stages of the negotiations, which became much more robust in the wake of the 2002 election of Luiz Inácio (Lula) da Silva. Importantly, the second challenge came from Venezuela and was much more radical in its tone in a way that pierced the consensus that pervaded the inner track of the of the FTAA negotiations.

Brazil may not have been as radical as Venezuela in its disposition toward the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), but its structural strength in the hemisphere meant that it nonetheless had a determining role in shaping the negotiations and their eventual collapse. At the beginning of the FTAA negotiations in 1994 and during the preparations for the Miami Summit of the Americas, Brazil displayed an attitude of caution toward the negotiations. This caution did not imply a wholesale rejection of the agreement’s underlying neoliberal ideology, nor did it imply a rejection of the FTAA itself; rather, Brazil sought to obtain what it perceived to be the best terms for its economy and to slow down the negotiations in order to ensure that its economy could catch up to North America’s in terms of competitiveness before adhering to a hemispheric free trade agreement (FTA). It was the 1999 exchange crisis that represented a turning point in Brazil’s attitude toward the FTAA, as it prompted a crisis of authority that forced a rearticulation of the national hegemonic bloc based on the integration of economic interests that opposed the potential agreement.

The history of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations demonstrates the importance of putting agency in relation to structure when examining multilateral negotiations as well as shifts within global governance structures. With respect to structure, the asymmetries that characterized the economic relationships between the FTAA’s participants played no small part in shaping the evolution of the negotiations. For example, for Caribbean countries, the smaller sizes of their economies not only shaped their demand for differentiated treatment and compensatory mechanisms but also shaped their ability to participate in the negotiations, given the important limits on their institutional capacities. In terms of agency, the diplomatic tactics and skills of certain countries, particularly Brazil, played an important role in shaping both the structure and content of the FTAA negotiations. However, examined in isolation from one another, structure and agency only reveal part of the FTAA’s story. A focus on structural factors neglects the importance of the consensus that was in place at the beginning of the negotiations and cannot address the shifts in positions that took place during the negotiation of the agreement. An emphasis on agency disregards the manner in which social and political contexts shaped the positions and strategies employed by state actors during the negotiations.