Latin America: Its Future in the Global Economy

After the failure of the Seattle Ministerial Meetings, the new round of multilateral trade negotiations under the aegis of the WTO serves as an occasion to tackle unfinished business and to maintain the momentum towards an open multilateral trading system. The potential gains from a successful round requires that the concerns and interests of developing countries be incorporated into the negotiating process. Latin America is undergoing a simultaneous process of regionalization and globalization, and has yet to present a detailed position on specific issues in preparation for multilateral and regional integration negotiations. In this timely contribution to the effort to meet the complex challenges entailed in Latin America's increasing participation in world markets, twelve economists and two international trade lawyers provide a framework for the analysis of trade negotiations. They identify key points of disagreement among trading partners, and discuss controversial issues such as the environment, labour and agriculture, exceptional protection, investment, services, e-commerce and the efficiency of the dispute settlement mechanism. The contributors identify the optimum approach for Latin America to take in protecting its interests and enhancing its advantages in global trade, and assess the various tools that negotiators might use during the forthcoming round of multilateral negotiations. They make concrete recommendations concerning trade strategy and policy, implementation and management together with suggestions as to how Latin America can increase its bargaining power in order to deal with new circumstances in a changing global age. The issues covered are highly relevant to other developing regions and are crucial to the on-going debate on integration.