Charles E. Cobb Jr., chairman of Florida Free Trade Area of the Americas Inc.
By KRIS HUNDLEY
Published June 2, 2003
Q. What is the Florida Free Trade Area of the Americas?
It's a free trade agreement between 34 democratically elected countries in this hemisphere - all but Cuba - expected to go into effect in January 2005. This agreement would be similar to other common market agreements in that it would reduce tariffs down to zero and promote free trade back and forth. One of the things still to be decided is where the headquarters, or permanent secretariat, should be. With 34 member nations, it was decided that it was important to have a headquarters.
Q. Who's in the running for permanent secretariat and when will decision be made?
There are five applicants: Miami; Atlanta; Puebla, Mexico; Panama City, Panama; and Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The decision will be made sometime in 2004, with every member country having one vote.
Q. Your group is lobbying for FTAA's headquarters to be in Miami. Why does it matter?
First, there are the lawyers, accountants and workers that tend to congregate around these offices. But the really dynamic aspect of all this is the other foreign investment that tends to be made near international centers like Brussels or Geneva. Enterprise Florida estimated the FTAA and the permanent secretariat would create approximately 90,000 jobs in the state.
One of the scary things is if this goes somewhere else and Florida loses its brand identification as the gateway to the Americas. Rather than having that job growth, we could actually have losses as somewhere else becomes the logical gateway.
