Trade ministers from 34 Western Hemisphere nations are set to agree on a timetable for creating a free-trade zone from the Arctic to Argentina by 2005, an area embracing more than 800 million consumers.
The US-sponsored plan to dismantle trade barriers throughout the Americas may be jeopardized by the reluctance of Brazil's new president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and his government to sign on to any accord that he says would lead to Latin America's "annexation" by the world's largest economy.
"When they take power, they will announce their position on all the issues," including the Free Trade Area of the Americas, Clodoaldo Hugueney, the nation's undersecretary general for integration, economic and foreign trade issues, said in an interview in Quito, Ecuador, where the talks are being held.
Brazil's skepticism about the free-trade area led US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, who's attending the meeting, to say the US will press ahead with the talks with or without Brazil, South America's largest economy.
Brazil can "trade with Antarctica" if it doesn't want to reach an accord with the US, Zoellick said.
Brazilians aren't the only ones concerned about the effect of freeing trade in the hemisphere. Ten people were injured yesterday in violent clashes between the police and 3,000 Indians who marched into Quito to protest the talks, according to the Ecuadorean Red Cross. Indians from Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia and Mexico took part, march organizers said.
Sebastien Theberge, a spokesman for Canadian Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew, said he's confident Brazil will go along.
Canada ``doesn't believe that the election of the new president will change the commitments to trade liberalization in the Americas,'' he said in an interview.
Theberge said Brazil and the US are taking over the joint chairmanship of the negotiations for their duration, giving the Lula government the opportunity to play a ``distinct role'' in the final phase of the talks.
Hugueney said the ministers have agreed on a series of negotiating sessions that would lead to the conclusion of the talks by the end of 2004.
The next meeting of the FTAA's trade-negotiating committee, which handles the market-access offers that make up the core of the talks, will be in April, he said.
At the core of the wrangling will be food trade. Many of Latin America's economies are agricultural exporters, and the US market for much of their produce is restricted by quotas, tariffs or both.
The US has import limits on oranges, sugar and steel that favor companies such as PepsiCo Inc's Tropicana unit, Archer Daniels Midland Co and US Steel Corp.
While Brazil is the world's largest sugar producer, its exports to the US are limited by a quota system. Orange juice from Brazil, the world's largest producer, is subject to a tariff of 8 cents a liter and a Florida state tax of US$0.03 a gallon.
"Access for agricultural products is essential," no matter who is president, said Marcus Vinicus Pratini de Moraes, Brazil's agriculture minister, in an interview last month.
"If there is no agreement on agriculture, the FTAA will be long delayed."
The US has said that while it is willing to tear down barriers to Latin American farm trade, it won't do so before parallel global market-opening talks are concluded at the WTO in Geneva.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is