Editing Free Trade Area of the Americas (section)

===Disagreements===
In previous negotiations, the United States had pushed for a single comprehensive agreement to reduce trade barriers for goods, while increasing intellectual property protection. Specific intellectual property protections could include [[Digital Millennium Copyright Act]] style copyright protections similar to the [[U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement]]. Another protection would likely have restricted the importation or cross importation of pharmaceuticals, similar to the proposed agreement between the United States and Canada. Brazil posed a three-track approach that called for a series of bilateral agreements to reduce specific tariffs on goods, a hemispheric pact on [[rules of origin]], and a dispute resolution process Brazil proposed to omit the more controversial issues from the FTA, leaving them to the WTO.

The location of the FTA Secretariat was to have been determined in 2005. The contending cities were: [[Atlanta, Georgia|Atlanta]], [[Chicago]], [[Galveston, Texas|Galveston]], [[Houston, Texas|Houston]], [[San Juan, Puerto Rico|San Juan]], and [[Miami]] in the United States; [[Cancún]] and [[Puebla, Puebla|Puebla]] in Mexico; [[Panama City]], Panama; and [[Port of Spain]], [[Trinidad and Tobago]]. The U.S. city of [[Colorado Springs, Colorado|Colorado Springs]] also submitted its candidacy in the early days but subsequently withdrew.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ftaa-alca.org/tnc/candidate_e.asp |title=ALCA – FTA – ZLEA – Candidate Cities for the Permanent Site of the FTAA Secretariat |publisher=Ftaa-alca.org |access-date=2013-08-15}}</ref> Miami, Panama City and Puebla served successively an interim secretariat headquarters during the negotiation process.

The last summit was held at [[Mar del Plata]], Argentina, in November 2005, but no agreement on FTA was reached. Of the 39 countries present at the negotiations, 20 pledged to meet again in 2006 to resume negotiations, but no meeting took place. The failure of the Mar del Plata summit to establish a comprehensive FTA agenda augured poorly.