Professional Paper Update Take 1

Am I done yet? Can't I be done?....Oh wait, I'm supposed to be positive I think. The professional paper is coming along slowly but surely. And I'll think about not calling you Shirley anymore.

I'm up to 28 pages right now (including 5 pages for the title page, table of contents, and references). There's still a lot to be said. At this point I've pretty much gotten all of the arguments down, but I still have to strengthen the agriculture argument by looking at the other FTAs the U.S. has negotiated to see if agriculture issues are included. By the looks of it, explicit tariffs are addressed, but non-tariff barriers (i.e. subsidies) are not. I still have to write the background piece, which is basically just writing the timeline of the negotiations process and also talk about Latin America's economic history since about the 1950s. I'm putting that off because it's more boring and is merely regurgitation of facts.

It will be interesting to see how this turns out in the end. I'm still not sure what my conclusion about the whole thing will be. I could say that the FTAA is too heavily dependent on Doha, and we won't see anything happen with FTAA unless something happens with Doha. I could say that I don't think it's likely that such an agreement will be passed because there are too many differences throughout the hemisphere that are difficult to address, both economic and political. Or I could say that the agreement could indeed pass if all parties involved would truly be willing to make some changes, and I could then discuss the likelihood of that happening.

We'll all have to wait and see...