Under Peruvian law, it takes about a million signatures to force a referendum. However, with a petition with about 40,000 signatures, citizens can submit a Bill. TLC Así No managed to collect 100,000 signatures, and the JNE declared just under 60,000 of them valid. The Bill, which must now be either approved or rejected by Congress within 120 days (it cannot be tabled), would require a public referendum to approve free trade agreements.

President Alejandro Toledo is expected to fly to Washington on Wednesday to sign the FTA with the US, opening the way to a Congressional debate on the agreement. However, polls have shown that about two-thirds of peruvians believe that the decision should be left to the Congress which will be elected tomorrow (and take office at the end of July) since the current Congress is not perceived as having sufficient legitimacy. Many of those who feel that the decision should be delayed also support the FTA, but a government decision to railroad the approval would likely change public opinion.

The government has spent quite a lot of public money on a pro-FTA publicity campaign, but the campaign had to be suspended after the JNE ruled that it violated election publicity rules during the campaign period. It is not clear whether it can be reinitiated on Monday, or whether it will have to wait for the results of the second round of the presidential election, likely to be at the end of May.

In the current electoral climate, the citizen's initiative is another headache for the pro-FTA forces. Rejecting the Bill (or for that matter approving the FTA) would likely increase support for Humala in the second round. Delaying approval, on the other hand, would push the debate in the US House much closer to the US elections, in which case it might not pass. (CAFTA was approved by only a couple of votes, and the Bush administration is much more vulnerable now.)

After the obvious failure of the FTAA negotiations, the United States started negotiating piecemeal trade deals; one of these, CAFTA, is in the process of being ratified. Another one was a joint Andean FTA negotiated jointly with Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. Venezuela and Bolivia, the other two members of the Community of Andean Nations, were not part of the negotiations, although Bolivia "observed" the process. The negotiations were difficult, and late in the process the government of Peru broke solidarity by announcing that it would be prepared to sign regardless of the other two countries. Toledo, at one point, said he was committed to signing the deal "Sí o sí", which is a pretty stupid negotiating tactic if you think about it.

Colombia's president recently signed the deal, and given his new majority in both Chambers of the Colombian government, it seems likely that Colombia will ratify the agreement.

It may seem ironic that Ecuador is the only of the three countries where anti-FTA protests have been massive and also the country which has taken the hardest negotiating stance with the US. It is still trying to get a better deal on agriculture. Obviously, its bargaining power is much less than would have been the case had the Andean nations maintained solidarity. In fact, it probably would have been better if CAN had refused the deal altogether and instead worked harder on regional economic deals; however, there is quite a lot of mutual distrust and there is probably less public support for trade deals between Andean countries than between an individual country and the United States or the European Union.

The European Union has been quite clear throughout that it would like to negotiate a trade deal but that it is only willing to do so with a regional economic bloc, that is with CAN or Mercosur. In part, I suppose, this is a way of encouraging the EU model. While the EU would be equally difficult to negotiate with in terms of agricultural, CAN would have had a better negotiating position if it had been negotiating simultaneously with two different trading partners.

In practice, the US cannot yield much; a deal which was more favorable to South America would not be passed by the House of Representatives. It is possible that the EU could be more flexible in negotiations, particularly on intellectual property rights.

Looking at Ecuador's exports to the US - 66% is oil. Supposedly, Mexico the only growth because of NAFTA has been in the flower trade (less than 10% of the trade). Flowers are in a similar position for Ecuador. Don't they face US dumping of cereals and corn?

The oil - the US is going to need oil regardless, free trade or not. For Ecuador is not really in a long term competition for oil with anyone it seems. I am sure China wouldn't mind picking up the slack in any US action (if they thought that was a good idea).

And from one source I read - the manufacturing diversification is a no go, pointed out that Peruvian stoves were making it on to the Ecuadorian market, and if they were cheaper to make in Peru and smuggle them in (or with the taxes on them) then its unlikely that Ecuador could compete. (My spanish isn't the best at reading economics stuff)

The intellectual property - particularly around the generic drugs is rather frightening. The other side of that is US companies coming in and patenting genes from plants that have been cultivated for generations. I don't know if thats just a scare tactic from the No a TLC, but it doesn't seem outside of the realm of American multinational interests.

My view is that so-called FTAs, at least the ones the US is promoting, are really an explicit attack on democracy. They seek to permanently remove government from domain of economic policy. In parallel, there is a growing movement to shift foreign policy decision-making from political government to the military, and particularly to military "alliances". So it's a consistent attack on democracy. Once democracy has been stripped of any significant decision-making power, it is then safe to promote elections, something the US has never been particularly keen on in the past.

One could imagine agreements which only sought to lower trade barriers. Those might bring net benefits. In particular, I think there would be net benefits from such agreements between Andean countries. Import duties are effectively a sales tax, and like any other sales tax they are regressive. However, that needs to be balanced against other national priorities. I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all answer. Regardless, that's not the sort of deal we're currently talking about.

ATPDEA is not really a free-trade agreement; it's a concession. That is, it allows certain Andean products to enter the United States with lower import duties (for many products, 0) in return for participation with US drug enforcement policy, and some other political concessions. So ATPDEA does not require Andean countries to lower their own import barriers, which is why I described it as unilateral -- although asymmetrical might have been a better word. In Peru, it has been beneficial, for example, to asparagus growers and textile manufacturers.

One of the consequences of the FTA is that it will shift purchasing from neighbouring countries to the US; the Bolivian soybean sector is going to be squeezed by that when Colombia starts buying US soy products instead of Bolivian products. So while joining the FTA may not bring benefits as such, not joining the FTA may be prejudicial. This is why I think CAN should work on regional solidarity as a priority rather than being pushed into signing FTAs with the US.

If the US really believed its own rhetoric about sponsoring economic growth through increased trade, they would simply lower their trade barriers without asking for anything in return. Eventually, if it actually increased prosperity in South America, South American consumers would put pressure on their governments to lower import duties. But US foreign policy is based on selfishness, not humanitarianism; as a country in the world community, it does not have morals, only national interests. Its national interests lead it to submit small, poor countries to economic blackmail; if the pressure is great enough, the countries will yield.