The Road to Hemispheric Cooperation: Beyond the Cartagena

The current situation is important: It calls not for recoiling
and turning our backs on liberalization, but for closer trade
integration and liberalization. Agreements are not enough
in a world of fierce competition. The future agenda has to
span beyond agreements and include measures that facilitate
doing business across borders—improving customs,
logistics and infrastructures, as well as building relationships
with consumers in foreign markets and multinational
firms (potentially major regional clients for LAC’s small and
medium-sized firms). Only then can the hard-earned integration
of the past two decades be fully harnessed for trade,
growth, and development.
Endnotes
1 U.N. COMTRADE database.
2 These countries are: Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bahamas,
Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica,
Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada,
Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico,
Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis,
Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad
and Tobago, Uruguay and Venezuela. Only Cuba was not
invited to participate.
3 John Williamson, author of the phrase “Washington Consensus,”
identified ten key reforms that Latin America should have
implemented in 1989: fiscal discipline, reordering public expenditure
priorities, tax reform, liberalizing interest rates, adopting a
competitive exchange rate, trade liberalization, liberalization of
FDI, privatization, deregulation, and property rights (see John
Williamson, “Did the Washington Consensus Fail?” (Peterson Institute
for International Economics, 2002). Available at: www.iie.
com/publications/papers/paper.cfm?ResearchID=488.
4 IMF Direction of Trade Statistics, 2012.
5 In 2010, total exports of goods and services reached about
$1.015 trillion; total imports of merchandise goods and services
was $1.028 trillion. Based on the World Bank World Development
Indicators database, 2012.
6 Intra-regional trade in Latin America and the Caribbean excludes
the United States and Canada.
7 Richard E. Feinberg, Summitry in the Americas: A Progress Report
(Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1997).
8 Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the
Late Twentieth Century (University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).
9 Antoni Estevadeordal, Dani Rodrik, Alan M. Taylor, and Andrés
Velasco, Integrating the Americas: FTAA and Beyond. (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2004).
10 Nicola Phillips, “Coping with China,” in Andrew F. Cooper and
Jorge Heine (eds.), Which Way Latin America? Hemispheric
Politics Meets Globalization (Tokyo: United Nations University
Press, 2009), pp. 100-121.
11 Osvaldo Rosales, José E. Durán Lima, and Sebastián Sáez,
“Trends in Latin American Integration,” in Joseph A. McKinney
and H. Stephen Gardner (eds.), Economic Integration in the
Americas (New York: Routledge, 2008).
12 Antoni Estevadeordal and Kati Suominen with Jeremy Harris
and Matthew Shearer, Bridging Regional Trade Agreements
in the Americas (Washington: Inter-American Development
Bank, 2009).
13 These are: Belize, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic,
El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua,
Panama, Peru and Uruguay.
14 These are: the United States, Canada, Mexico, Chile and Peru
(Estevadeordal and Suominen, 2009).
15 In the Americas, U.S., Chile and Peru are formally members of the
TPP, and Mexico and Canada have been also formally invited.
16 These are: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador,
Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.
The Road to Hemispheric Cooperation: Beyond the Cartagena Summit of the Americas
The Brookings Institution ❘ Latin America Initiative
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