Word: braziller
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...greeting that President Bush received at his first trade summit in Quebec--tear gas and rioters--was as much a reminder as those posters that trade has become an electric issue. Some of the points are legit: signing a country like Brazil to a trade pact could make it harder for Brazilians living with AIDS to get cheap counterfeit drugs. But there is also blind fury from parts of the world where trade is seen as a tool of imperialism, not modernization. It may be even harder to undo that perception than it is to ink agreements on trade. Unfortunately...
...wouldn't you know it - there are already signs of new cultivation under way in Peru. Of course, the U.S. is ready for that, having trained Peruvian navy personnel at a secret base in the Amazon to go after jungle farmers and intercept boats bound for Colombia and Brazil...
...Brazilian president Henrique Cardoso wasn't standing anywhere near Bush at that moment. Brazil, to put it simply, is the head of the skeptics. Mercosur, the South American trading bloc, isn't as thorough a free-trade area as NAFTA, and is beset with internal squabbles. But they have their pride. When Brazil hears Bush talk about three competing world trade zones, it wonders whether South America wouldn't be better off as a fourth leg - doing, as it is now, a nice little business with Europe as well as North America - rather than living in the NAFTA shadow...
...Bush rightly sells NAFTA as an example of how free trade can help the little partner along with the big - "Canada has benefited, Mexico has benefited, the U.S. has benefited" - but to Brazil, they all look pretty big up north, and Washington in particular doesn't seem to want to give as good as it gets. The last of the significant U.S. tariffs under NAFTA, known euphemistically as "anti-dumping laws," have deeply entrenched support in Congress, and Brazil has cause to wonder whether Latin American-produced commodities like sugar will ever find as hospitable a welcome...
...Maybe. But when? Much of the tension and unease of the north-south divisions in the hemisphere have been funneled into convoluted maneuvers over the timing of the FTAA launch. (The deadline date is itself the result of a compromise: Brazil originally wanted it set for 2010.) The latest efforts by the NAFTA forces involved suggestions to push forward the 2005 deadline for the FTAA's launching to 2003. The Brazilians have cold-shouldered the idea. Foreign Minister Lafer says a two-year speed-up would swamp domestic industries with a flood of low-priced goods before his country...