The 1990s and the early years of the 21st century have witnessed
the emergence and proliferation of regional and bilateral trade
agreements
(RBTAs) between developed and developing countries in the
Americas.
These agreements typically liberalize trade in most goods and
services, and they also coordinate measures on a broad range of
economic policy areas beyond trade. The first and most prominent of
these agreements is the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), which the USA, Canada and Mexico signed in the early
1990s. In subsequent years, the USA has concluded agreements with a
number of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The contributors to this book evaluate the economics and
politics of this new pattern of North-South integration in the
Americas. The book begins by considering the developmental
implications of this new pattern of integration. Such agreements
provide Latin American and Caribbean countries with significantly
improved access to the US market, yet purchasing such preferential
access via negotiation of RBTAs agreements with the US obliges
countries to adopt US-style practices in areas such as the
management of inward foreign investment and intellectual property.
The first half of the volume addresses these issues, focusing on
the challenges derived from new patterns of foreign investment, the
rise of China as an exporting power, the emergence of a new regime
for investment protection, and the multiplicity of intrusive forms
of economic governance embodied in regional and global trade
regimes. The second half of the book focuses on both the
proliferation of RBTAs, and, critically, the limits to the spread
of such agreements. The authors considerthe interests in
integration and strategies for negotiating RBTAs from the
perspective of a variety of actors, deploying a range of analytic
approaches. The chapters assess the capacities of the US to fulfil
ambitions for integration, the strategy of Canada to both maintain
close relations with the US and counterbalance its neighbor's
preponderant influence throughout the region, the response of
smaller countries in Central America and the Caribbean, reactions
toward integration of the larger South American countries in
Mercosur, and the broader question of how developing countries form
coalitions and design collective bargaining strategies to
participate in international trade politics.
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