U.S. and Its Neighbors to Start Free-Trade Talks : Diplomacy: Officials will attempt to create a North American common market. The job is expected to be anything but easy.

With little fanfare, negotiators for the United States, Mexico and Canada will sit down today in Toronto to begin hammering out what they hope will be an ambitious free-trade agreement governing commerce throughout North America.

The first session of trade talks are almost an anticlimax to the bruising battle in Washington, in which the Bush Administration overcame opposition from organized labor, environmentalists and consumer groups and persuaded Congress to extend it “fast-track” authority to negotiate the agreement.

“We played fast track like it was the Super Bowl, when in fact fast track was the preseason game,” said American Express Co. Chairman James D. Robinson III, who is a leading figure in the business coalition that lobbied for the talks.

Fast-track authority is a guarantee by Congress that it will accept or reject the ultimate agreement intact after it is presented, and not try to renegotiate by picking it apart with special-interest amendments. The Administration argued that it could not negotiate the agreement unless Congress gave it that assurance.

Scores of issues must be settled during the talks, which could extend into next year. “There are a lot of nerves exposed,” one U.S. trade official said.

The initial meeting today, however, will be organizational, in which key negotiators will attempt to lay out procedures and get “a very general sense of timing,” said Victoria Clarke, a spokesman for U.S. Trade Representative Carla Anderson Hills.

It will be a small meeting, attended only by Hills, Mexican Commerce Secretary Jaime Serra-Puche, Canadian Trade Minister Michael Wilson and two deputies for each.

A free-trade agreement would mean that for purposes of doing business, the economies of the three nations would become virtually one, with no tariffs or other trade barriers separating them.

Canada and Mexico are this country’s first- and third-largest trading partners.

The United States negotiated a free-trade agreement with Canada in 1988. In the upcoming talks, the most complex issue will be trying to fit the U.S. and Canadian economies in with that of Mexico, which is far less developed and has a drastically different standard of living.

President Bush and other supporters have said a free-trade agreement will mean greater economic growth for all three countries. Opponents have argued, however, that it will amount to an open invitation to corporations to move their operations south, to take advantage of Mexico’s lower wages and less-stringent regulations.

To address these concerns in Congress, the Administration pledged that the pact would be accompanied by measures designed to alleviate Mexico’s staggering pollution problem and to aid U.S. workers who lose jobs as a result of the agreement.

Under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Mexico already has begun to move toward opening its economy to trade with the rest of the world. Mexico has lowered its tariffs and loosened its restrictions on foreign investments. Salinas is also promoting legislation that would afford better protection of foreign copyrights and patents.

However, Eastman Kodak Co. Chairman Kay Whitmore contended that a free-trade agreement is necessary to lock in many of these reforms and assure that they will continue after the end of Salinas’ six-year term.

“It’s the uncertainty factor that’s the biggest impediment” to commerce between the two countries, said Whitmore, who also is chairman of the Business Roundtable’s Mexico working group. The Roundtable, which includes chief executives of the nation’s largest corporations, has been an active proponent of the talks.