American farmers, keen to export, have been lobbying for a renewal of fast-track negotiating authority.

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Also, it would have secured by now the fast-track negotiating authority so essential to the viability of future free-trade initiatives.

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Although nobody yet talks of it publicly, one popular revised deadline is 2007, the year that Mr Bush's fast-track negotiating authority expires.

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And Congress is in no mood to grant it fast-track negotiating authority, without which America lacks the power to strike trade deals and so cannot negotiate credibly.

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Every American president since 1974 -- Democrat and Republican alike -- has had the authority to negotiate new trade agreements called fast-track negotiating authority, which permits the agreements to be presented in a package to the Congress to be approved -- up or down.

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This explains why Mr Clinton never made a convincing case for fast-track trade-negotiating authority, which Congress consequently blocked.

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The White House also hopes to renew the President's fast-track trade negotiating authority, which expires this summer.

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The U.S. Congress's refusal to give President Clinton "fast-track" trade negotiating authority is only the most publicized example of a trend throughout the region away from economic openness.

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If the fast-track process is not extended, trade negotiating authority could become encumbered by congressional intervention, which would effectively kill the Doha discussions.

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And though Latin Americans are sceptical of negotiating with a president who lacks fast-track authority, it is, after all, at the end, not the start, of talks that that authority is required.

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