The Impact of New Regionalism on Trade Policy Making: The Case of MERCOSUR and the FTAA

Mercedes Isabel Botto

doi:10.16993/ibero.204

Abstract

Iberoamericana – Revista Nórdica de Estudios de Latinoamérica y el Caribe, es una revista académica arbitrada, interdisciplinaria y bilingüe. Es administrada por el Instituto de Estudios Latinoamericanos de la Universidad de Estocolmo en colaboración con otras universidades nórdicas con el objetivo de presentar investigación de alta calidad sobre América Latina.La revista publica artículos originales enfocados en temas relacionados con las ciencias sociales y humanidades. Investigadores de todo el mundo son bienvenidos a enviar sus manuscritos en inglés o español.

Highlights

Since the ‘90s, Latin American Countries (LACs) have been signing and negotiating many trade agreements, constituting what is called new regionalism (BID/IADB, 2002)
This paper focuses on the impact of new regionalism on the domestic policy making process
A feature of the new regionalism is its emphasis on deepening trade liberalization

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Since the ‘90s, Latin American Countries (LACs) have been signing and negotiating many trade agreements, constituting what is called new regionalism (BID/IADB, 2002). In the case of Chile, trade liberalization started in the mid- ́70s during the military rule and took the form of a unilateral liberalization Their own version of the “neo-liberal” model implied the neutrality of the economic policy; this belief translated into a much defined policy: the implementation of a flat tariff and the harmonization of protection or incentives across sectors. The strategy of opening markets through sub-regional and bilateral negotiations spread out over the whole region in the 90 ́s as a consequence of the offer of industrial countries to improve market access opportunities and increase foreign external investments This new type of regionalism imposes big challenges to national governments -and states- for trade policy making. The way that governments deal with this conflict/cooperation scenario between public/private interests in both national and multilateral arenas has been, as we will show to include new actors and to change some procedures in the policy making

THE DECISION MAKING PROCESS OF MERCOSUR

THE DECISION MAKING PROCESS OF FTAA

Findings

CONCLUSION