The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is the formal name given to an expansion of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) that would include nearly all of the countries in the western hemisphere. This massive NAFTA expansion is currently being negotiated in secret by trade ministers from a total of 34 nations in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean. The goal of the FTAA is to impose the failed NAFTA model of increased privatization and deregulation hemisphere-wide. Imposition of these rules would empower corporations to constrain governments from setting standards for public health and safety, to safeguard their workers, and to ensure corporations do not pollute the communities in which they operate. Effectively, these rules would handcuff governments' public interest policymaking and enhance corporate control at the expense of citizens throughout the Americas. FTAA would deepen the negative effects of NAFTA we've seen in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. over the past seven years and expand NAFTA's damage to the other 31 countries involved.