WASHINGTON, Sept. 6 (Xinhuanet) -- The United States has accelerated establishment of bilateral free trade relationship with other countries, sealing free trade agreements with nine countries in the first eight months of this year. This is more than the total the country had signed before.

    Meanwhile, the United States is also currently negotiating freetrade agreements with ten more countries.

    The US Trade Representative office hails that the United Statespursues comprehensive free trade agreements on a bilateral basis to expand opportunities for American workers, farmers and ranchers.

    Opponents to free trade, however, have been accusing the administration, by pursuing free trade agreements, of losing more Americans' jobs to developing countries where labor costs are relatively low. That thus has resulted in the long-standing lackluster of the US job market, they say.

    The US job market did not grow as people expected although the economy had begun recovery since the second quarter of last year. The government reported last Friday the economy created 144,000 jobs in August and bumped up its earlier estimates for June and July, yielding a three-month average of 104,000 new jobs a month. But this was still much lower than the 216,000 jobs a month that President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers had been expecting.

    Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry has also accused President Bush of failing to protect US workers from foreign competition.

    Yet those pressures have not prevented the administration from negotiating and signing bilateral free trade agreements with othercountries. Analysts believe that it is a sense of urgency that hasbeen pushing the United States to speed up its pace.

    Since late 1990s, new changes have taken place in the global trade market. More and more sub-regional and regional free trade organizations have emerged. And some scholars even declared that the world had entered an era of regional cooperation.

    The Unites States did not keep up with the new trend at the beginning. Data released by the World Trade Organization showed that up to 2002, there had been more than 250 free trade arrangements globally. Of them, however, the United States took part in only three.

    What the Bush administration is worried about is that the country's economic and political interests would be hurt if it kept staying outside the trend, according to analysts.

    The United States says it is working to open market globally inthe Doha World Trade Organization negotiations; regionally, through Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the Free Trade Areaof the Americas (FTAA) negotiations; and bilaterally, with free trade agreements.

    In fact, regional trade initiatives are a key part of the US trade strategy. They include the FTAA, the Enterprise for Association of Southeast Asian Nations Initiative, the Middle EastFree Trade Initiative, and the North American Free Trade Agreement(NAFTA). The FTAA, aimed at uniting the Western Hemisphere in a free trade zone, is the focal point of the US trade strategy.

    The FTAA will be a further extension of the NAFTA, which a decade ago linked the United States, Canada and Mexico in a free trade area of 427 million people. The effort to unite the economies of the Americas into a single free trade area began at the Summit of the Americas, which was held in December 1994 in Miami, the US.

    The heads of state and government of 34 countries in the regionagreed to establish the FTAA, in which barriers to trade and investment will be progressively eliminated. They agreed to complete negotiations on this agreement by the year 2005.

    Making progress to the ambitious FTAA, which domestic supporters say will make the United State more secure, the countryhas completed free trade negotiations with five countries of Central America and the Dominican Republic this year. Its negotiations with four more Latin American nations are underway.

    The country is also trying to secure its economic and politicalinterests in Asia, the Middle East and Africa through establishingfree trade relationship with countries in those regions. It has completed free trade agreements with Australia, Morocco and Bahrain this year, and is engaged in negotiations with Thailand and the five-nation Southern African Customs Union -- Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland and Namibia.

    The completed agreements will take effect after getting Congress approval. The Congress has so far approved agreements with Australia and Morocco. There is a possibility that the rest will not get approval until after the November general election. Enditem