The Free Trade Area of the Americas is a great idea whose time has not yet arrived.

The Bush administration and its allies across the Americas face a deadline next year to tear down barriers to unfettered commerce from Tierra del Fuego in Argentina to the North Slope in Alaska.

The charge toward the deadline continues in Miami this week, as the hemisphere's trade ministers gather for a round of FTAA negotiations. The pact would be the most ambitious trade accord ever attempted, dwarfing the deals that created the European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement in size, complexity and scope.

The FTAA project emerged after the successful 1994 Summit of the Americas in Miami. At the conclusion of that hopeful gathering, the leaders of every nation in the Americas, save Cuba, committed themselves to an FTAA treaty by the end of 2004. They reaffirmed that commitment at a similar gathering in Quebec two years ago.

There are many reasons why an FTAA has appeal. It would create a trading bloc numbering 34 countries, 800 million consumers and $14 trillion in economic power.

Florida stands to gain mightily, because of the location of its ports, diversity of people and historical ties to the hemisphere. And if it could lure the permanent FTAA headquarters to Miami, it would bolster the region's status as a gateway to the Americas.

Yes, there are many reasons to advocate for the FTAA. Just not right now. That's why negotiators should push back the deadline to 2010.

In 1994, the Americas were at the doorstep of an economic boom. Democracy was flourishing after decades of military dictatorships, coups and flirtations with Marxist ideology. An FTAA within a decade seemed feasible.

Ten years later, the panorama has changed dramatically. Latin America is in the throes of a terrible economic meltdown. Political instability is on the upswing. Two of South America's biggest countries and markets, Colombia and Venezuela, are racked by bitter and bloody strife.

Poverty, which fuels the friction, is at staggering proportions. Some 220 million people in the Americas live on a budget of a few dollars a day.

Think of it. For just about every individual in the United States, there is a man, woman or child in Latin America and the Caribbean who lives in acute impoverishment.

This stunning disparity in wealth places enormous financial obstacles before a healthy, mutually beneficial trading bloc.

On top of that, Latin America has been swept into another debt crisis. With the region's foreign debt exceeding $700 billion, governments are forced to earmark large percentages of their budget expenditures for repaying the IOUs. That leaves little money for education, technological innovation, roads and housing -- the basic building blocks for competitive and productive trading partners.

The inequality of income in the region is astonishing. According to the World Bank, the richest one-tenth of the population in Latin America and the Caribbean earn 48 percent of the total income. The poorest one-tenth live off 1.6 percent of the region's income. Many among the poor depend on dollars sent to them by relatives living in the United States.

With such a divide, it is difficult to see how the gains from the FTAA would bolster egalitarian growth and development -- a critical point if the FTAA is to broaden the roster of consumers abroad for U.S.-made products.

Free traders advocate a dreamy scenario in which the unprecedented might of the U.S. economy lifts the hemisphere toward prosperity, but mathematics, economics and common sense suggest otherwise.

The U.S. economy, though showing signs of a strong rebound, has challenges, too. The United States posted a record $435.2 billion trade deficit last year. The U.S. government is also bleeding red ink, with a deficit of $374 billion this past fiscal year.

U.S. workers have lost close to 3 million jobs in the past three years, due mostly to a recession and the Sept. 11 attacks. But as many as 700,000 jobs might have been lost as factories relocated to countries where labor is cheaper.

Instead of leading a revival, flinging the doors open to unencumbered trade now could spark a race to the bottom. For example, Ecuadorans fear that a flood of imported U.S. agricultural products could hurt their country's farmers, who account for 30 percent of Ecuador's economy. Likewise, labor groups fear U.S. workers will lose more jobs if additional factories are shipped to Central or South America, where labor is much cheaper.

That race could result in higher unemployment in the United States, and an erosion of regulations to protect the environment -- without doing much to fuel broad-based growth and development in the Americas or to generate opportunities for those displaced in the United States.

These issues are huge, and could take a millennium to fix. Still, the FTAA can work if the countries get a little more time to turn their economies around. 2010 is a better deadline than 2004.

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