In addition to these specific recommendations, our submission includes three general recommendations. First, we urge the 34 governments participating in the FTAA process to make the private sector a full partner the negotiations. We applaud the recent decision of the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) to post on the official FTAA Web site an official checklist on implementation of the business facilitation measures approved at the Toronto FTAA Ministerial in November 1999. The checklist indicates whether and how the 34 governments have implemented the eight customs-related business facilitation measures agreed in Toronto.

We call on the 34 governments to build upon this decision and make a more concerted effort to engage the private sector in the negotiations. We urge the negotiators to post summaries of draft texts on the Internet from time to time or find other ways to involve the private sector.

As our second general recommendation, we wish to register our opposition to efforts to link trade policy to rules on labor conditions and environmental protection. Nearly all economists agree that free trade raises incomes, and higher incomes lead in turn to improvements in labor and environmental standards.

Efforts to block trade liberalization in the interest of promoting labor or environmental standards fly in the face of these facts. All too often, calls for trade-linked mechanisms to enforce labor and environmental standards are simply protectionism by another name. In fact, advocates of labor and environmental standards often seek to impose constraints in the very areas where Latin America’s economies are at their most competitive.

Improving labor conditions and environmental protection is important, and we advocate serious discussions in international fora on how to address these vital concerns. But trade liberalization is inherently beneficial to workers and the environment, and trade agreements should not be contingent upon labor or environmental standards.

Finally, we urge the 34 FTAA participants to expedite the negotiations. The TNC is apparently making good progress in preparing the bracketed text that will serve as the first draft of the FTAA. In light of this progress, the 2005 deadline seems needlessly distant. In the wake of the Buenos Aires FTAA Ministerial in April 2001, the remaining work will be largely a matter of political will. This being the case, the FTAA could surely be completed in 2002.

We therefore recommend that the trade ministers establish a new deadline of December 31, 2002, to complete the text of the FTAA. Two years is sufficient time to make the political decisions that will form the basis of an agreement, and ratification of the agreement by the hemisphere’s governments can still be completed well before the 2005 deadline. Free trade will bring substantial benefits to all of the countries of the hemisphere. We should seize these benefits without delay.