Trade Integration for the Americas: What Can Economic Analysis ...

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22other countries) to join NAFTA (presumably renamed at some point) to avoid being leftout and to attain desired access to the US market.What has emerged, perhaps unwittingly, for US trade policy strategy is apatchwork set of arrangements: periodic and varying commitments to multilateralism,ample rhetoric on the virtues of freer trade, and a mixture of RTAs, increasinglycharacterized by a “hub and spokes” framework of bilateral preferential trade agreements.Under such agreements there is intended free trade between the center hub (the US) andthe peripheral countries. But there is no free trade between the peripheral countries – asthere would be with the FTAA. The gains are concentrated for the US and the countrieswhich are left out of the bilateral arrangements suffer welfare losses as a result of tradediversion. In sum, this policy is discriminatory, nontransparent and potentially harmfulfor Latin America. 25 It is not the policy that any thoughtful US policy-maker concernedabout US-Latin American relations and development in Latin America would havewillfully designed.The Doha Round. Over the next several months critical steps will be taken whichwill shape to outcomes of the coming Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiationsundertaken under the auspices of the WTO. The potential gains for Latin America, aswell as for other countries, are substantial. It is impossible to predict that shape of anyDoha Round agreements at this early stage, since no clear liberalization formulas haveyet emerged in the different areas of negotiations. Nevertheless, some indicativeestimates are possible. HRTG/World Bank estimates, for instance, show that an acrossthe-board50 percent cut in tariffs would have welfare gains for Latin American, andother, countries exceeding those resulting from the FTAA, the MERCOSUL-EU FTA,the SAFTA or other potential RTAs for Latin American countries. (Table 5) It wouldappear that Latin America is best served to use its influence to help assure a favorableoutcome for the Round. Also, success in the Doha Round may help pave the way forbreakthroughs for negotiations for the FTAA and a possible MERCOSUL-EU free tradearrangement.25 Such policy is reminiscent, to a degree, of colonial trade policies previously prevailing in the Americas,where the colony was permitted to trade with the mother country but not with other countries or colonies.
23REFERENCESMarcelo Paiva de Abreu, “A Agenda de Negociações Comerciais do Brasil,” Palestra porocasião da comemoração dos 75 anos da Faculdade de Ciências Econômicas da UERJ,Rio de Janeiro, outubre de 2005.Mohamed Hedi Bchir, Yves Decreaux et al., “MIRAGE: A Computable GeneralEquilibrium Model for Trade Policy Analysis,” CEPII Working Paper No. 2002-12(December 2002), 58 pp.Centro de Economia Internacional (CEI), Alternativas de Integración para la Argentina:Un Análisis de Equilibrio General, Estudios dle CEI No. 1 (Buenos Aires: Junio de2002).Comunidad Andina, Analisis del Impacto del ALCA en la Comunidad Andina (Lima:Secretaria General de la Comunidad Andina, 2003).Jo-Ann Crawford and Roberto V. Fiorentino, “The Changing Landscape of RegionalTrade Agreements,” WTO Discussion Paper No. 8 (2005).Gabriela Cuadra, Alan Fairlie y David Florián, “Escenarios de Integración para el Perú enla Economia Mundial: Un Enfoque de Equilibrio General Computable,” PUCPInforme Parcial, Julio 2003.Gabriela Cuadra, David Florián y Alan Fairlie, “Escenarios de Integración para el Perú enla Economia Mundial,” PUCP, Presentación hecha em Power Point en Septiembre2003.Shantayanan Devarajan and Sherman Robinson, “The Influence of Computable GeneralEquilibrium Models on Policy,” International Food Policy Research Institute, TMDDiscussion Paper No. 98 (August 2002).Angelo Gurgel and William Tyler, “Brazilian Trade Policies: Some Observed andEstimated Effects of the 1990s Partial Liberalization,” UERJ Working Paper, January2005.Glenn Harrison, Thomas Rutherford, David G. Tarr and Angelo Gurgel, “Regional,Multilateral and Unilateral Trade Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction inBrazil,” published in Brazil as “Políticas de Comércio Regionais, Multilaterais eUnilaterais do MERCOSUL para o Crescimento Econômico e a Redução da Pobrezano Brasil,” Pesquisa e Planejamento Econômico, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Abril 2003), pp. 1-60. Also published as part of World Bank, Brazil – Trade Policies to ImproveEfficiency, Increase Growth and Reduce Poverty, Report No. 24285-BR (Washington:World Bank, 2004).
Page 1 and 2: June 2006Trade Integration for the
Page 4 and 5: 4Aside from the proliferation itsel
Page 6 and 7: 6Table 3: Quantification of the Eff
Page 8 and 9: 8A Case Study Example of CGE Modeli
Page 10 and 11: 10Second, as simulated by the PUCP
Page 12 and 13: 125. What are the likely effects of
Page 14 and 15: 14auspices of the World Bank 13 and
Page 16 and 17: 16will also be on the table. The Do
Page 18 and 19: 18access for its services and manuf
Page 20 and 21: 20countries deemed “excessive”
Page 24 and 25: 24Glenn Harrison, Thomas Rutherford
Page 26 and 27: 26ANNEXAnnex Table A1: Major Region

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