International | Pan-American trade

The mirage that won’t go away

|SAO PAULO

END agreed, means not. That, in short, is the tale of pan-American free trade. Meeting in December 1994, in Miami, 34—all but Fidel Castro—of the hemisphere's leaders agreed to negotiate a free-trade area of the Americas (FTAA) by 2005. Yet formal negotiations are still to begin. The hemisphere's trade ministers will hold their third meeting next week, this time in Belo Horizonte in Brazil. Can they advance?

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “The mirage that won’t go away”

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