Last weekend's Summit of the Americas in Quebec marked a milestone on the road to America's most important trade policy goal: the creation, by 2005, of the Free Trade Area of the Americas -- a space of democracy and open trade uniting the nations of the western hemisphere.

The FTAA, fulfilling the central aspiration of Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy, would be perhaps the most important achievement of hemispheric diplomacy since the era of Independence two centuries ago. And if successful, it would join the Atlantic alliance and the U.S.-Japan relationship as a basic pillar of world peace and prosperity in the new century.

The importance of this goal places it well beyond party rivalry. We thus applaud President Bush and the leaders of our FTAA partners -- representing nations from Canada to the Caribbean Islands and South America -- on a successful summit, and on the sustained commitment by a new set of elected leaders to the strategic goal their predecessors agreed upon in 1994 and 1998.

It's worth emphasizing that the negotiators in Quebec were representatives of democratically elected governments -- unlike the self-appointed representatives of "the people" who launched protests to demand an equal seat at the table. News media accounts of the protests that cast their participants as lineal descendents of the Civil Rights or anti-Vietnam War protestors should think again: there is nothing "progressive" about the globaphobes' eccentric view that trade and investment across national boundaries is the primary source of poverty and injustice in this hemisphere.

The work of the FTAA now shifts away from high-level meetings and conceptual discussions to detailed bargaining, with specific dates and timetables, on the issues that will make free trade in the hemisphere more than a bumper sticker: reductions of tariffs, reform of agricultural subsidies, introduction of competition to service sector monopolies, and more. But as it proceeds, President Bush must answer two larger questions.

First, will he make FTAA a real priority in an Administration that believes strongly in a very short agenda?

Without the kind of commitment of Presidential time and resources that President Clinton devoted to passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and Permanent Normal Trade Relations for China, the FTAA will not succeed. President Bush has come late to this realization. His speech to the Organization of American States last week was his first on trade. As a result, public awareness of the FTAA remains low and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick's campaign to renew the Trade Promotion Authority (formerly know as "fast-track" authority) that can facilitate its passage has made little progress.

Second, if the President is willing to spend some political capital on FTAA, does he have a plan that will succeed?

The Administration has viewed renewal of Trade Promotion Authority -- the procedure, lapsed since 1996, through which Congress sets trade negotiating objectives for major agreements and agrees to vote without amendment on their approval -- as essential to success in the FTAA. Up to now, however, its campaign for TPA has amounted to a series of threats to hold other trade measures (such as legislation granting Congressional approval of completed trade agreements with Jordan and Vietnam) hostage until it gets what it wants. "Flawed" is a charitable word for this approach: it is not only bad trade policy, but is also damaging to American strategic interests in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

More interestingly, though, this tactic misses the most compelling new case for TPA. As a recent paper by the Progressive Policy Institute's Ed Gresser notes, the Executive Branch has adapted to the absence of TPA by simply cutting Congress out of the trade negotiation process until an agreement has been signed. Every recent version of TPA legislation guarantees Congress ongoing consultation, and allows it to establish broad negotiating objectives (such as labor and environmental improvements) in advance. The Administration should argue that TPA is now a matter of self-interest for Congress, rather than the surrender of Congressional authority it once appeared to represent.

As the Quebec Summit fades into history, however, the arguments for TPA legislation are secondary. What is most important is that all participants -- the Administration, Congress and our negotiating partners -- retain their focus on the truly historic importance of the goal before us. For the first time in 200 years -- since the era of Latin American independence -- the Americas are united in shared values and understanding of mutual benefit. The FTAA is an opportunity to cement this happy circumstance for the century to come; and such an opportunity, if lost, may never be recaptured.