WHAT IS THE FREE TRADE AGREEMENT OF THE AMERICAS?
The Free Trade Agreement of the Americas is a proposed free trade agreement among 34 countries in the Western Hemisphere all of the nations of the Americas except Cuba. Given the combined population of over 800 million people and the combined annual gross domestic product of US$ 13.5 trillion that these countries have, the FTAA would be the largest free trade zone in the world. The FTAA was born in the cradle of the first Summit of the Americas, which took place in Miami, Florida, 9-11 December 1994. Convened by United States President Bill Clinton, the Summit came at the threshold of free trade deal-making in the 1990s, with the official launch of the North American Free Trade Agreement among Canada, Mexico, and the United States in January 1994 and the setting up of the World Trade Organization (WTO) at the completion of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations in January 1995 (12). The Mexican “peso crisis,” which erupted in 1995, delayed the official negotiati
