Anyone expecting a meaningful free trade agreement to emerge from last week’s FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) talks in Miami, Florida, is likely to have been disappointed.

As with the WTO trade talks of two months before in Cancun, Mexico, the meeting achieved little except to highlight the difficulties inherent in establishing a borderless trade zone between different economies, especially when one is the size of the USA.  In the instance of the FTAA, the proposed ‘common market’ was the entire Western hemisphere stretching from Alaska to Chile and serving a market of 800 million consumers. Attended by all but one of the 35 nations that make up the Americas (Non-democratic Cuba was not invited),  the talks had been intended as putting the finishing touches to an agreement that would see the creation of the world's biggest free trade area.

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