Miami ? At most free trade meetings, protesters on the streets are the most vocal opponents to global economic expansion. But recently, Brazil and other developing nations have been equally resistant to proposed U.S. policies to ease trade restrictions.

Those disputes will center in Miami at talks beginning today to create the world’s largest free trade area. As the 34 nations involved in the Free Trade Area of the Americas talks try to resolve their differences in hotel meeting rooms, police are prepared for at least 20,000 protesters to swarm the city.

Law enforcement agencies have spent months training to avoid a repeat of the infamous 1999 World Trade Organization talks in Seattle. Those meetings ended with little accomplished after being derailed by disputes among member nations and five days of riots that cost the city about $3 million.

The biggest feuds may take place inside the meeting rooms. The hemisphere’s two biggest economies — the United States and Brazil — have been arguing about the scope of the FTAA.

The FTAA proposes eliminating or reducing trade barriers among all the nations in the Western Hemisphere except Cuba.

The Bush administration refuses to discuss slashing subsidies and tariffs that protect U.S. farmers, arguing that those protections should be negotiated in global trade agreements, not regional ones, because the European Union is the biggest subsidizer of agriculture.

Brazil contends its farmers cannot compete in U.S. markets, so it is demanding that subsidies and tariffs be on the bargaining table.

Steffan Spencer covers his mouth with a strip of cloth on which is written free