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Begin New Search Topic International Trade and Finance Political Geography South America

51. Toward A Sustainable FTAA: Does Latin America Meet The Necessary Financial Preconditions?

Author:
Liliana Rojas-Suarez
Publication Date:
07-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
This paper focuses on identifying preconditions that will ensure the sustainability of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). It argues that the macro, micro, and political conditions advanced in the literature to measure a country's ability to compete internationally, while necessary, are not sufficient to ensure the success and permanence of a free trade agreement. Instead, two additional financial conditions are needed. The first is that each partner in the free trade area needs to have sustainable public debts as determined by the achievement of credible and sustainable structural fiscal balances. The second is that exchange rate regimes across trading partners should be compatible in the sense that adverse shocks in one country do not generate a policy dilemma in other partners between abandoning their exchange rate system or the free trade area.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, Central America, and Caribbean

52. Democratizing U.S. Trade Policy

Author:
Pat Choate and Bruce Stokes
Publication Date:
11-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Storm clouds signaling trouble with American trade policy have been gathering for some time. In the early 1990s, Congress barely approved creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and only strenuous efforts by the Clinton administration and the business community ensured passage of legislation creating the World Trade Organization (WTO). In the late 1990s, President Clinton twice failed to obtain congressional renewal of his trade-negotiating authority. The massive demonstrations during the meeting of the world's trade ministers in Seattle in 1999 reflected a widespread public unease with the impact of trade policy on a range of issues, from clear-cutting practices in the forests of Indonesia to the price of AIDS drugs in southern Africa. Today, public opinion polls consistently demonstrate that, although the American public supports freer trade in theory, it often has profound reservations about trade liberalization in practice. And the current global economic slowdown may only further polarize public opinion on trade issues.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, Indonesia, South America, and North America

53. Protest and Collaboration: Transnational Civil Society Networks and the Politics of Summitry and Free Trade in the Americas

Author:
Patricio Korzeniewicz and William C. Smith
Publication Date:
09-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
This paper examines the politics of hemispheric integration exemplified by the Summits of the Americas held in Miami (1994), Santiago (1998), and Quebec (2001) and the negotiations over the creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Our basic premise is that political and institutional arrangements articulating state, society, and economy in Latin America are currently in the midst of a process of reconfiguration unleashed by the acceleration of globalization and attendant crises of state-centered development strategies. More specifically, we believe the Americas are witnessing the emergence of an ensemble of new social and political actors, among the most salient of which are new social movements and civil society organizations (CSOs), organized in networks operating at the domestic, regional, and global levels.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, America, South America, Latin America, Central America, Caribbean, North America, and Miami

54. The Impact of MERCOSUR on the Automobile Industry

Author:
Jerry Haar and Thomas A. O'Keefe
Publication Date:
09-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
A transformation of the automotive industry, particularly the segment involved in production of finished vehicles, has taken place in the Southern Common Market (Mercado Común del Sur/Mercado Comum do Sul—MERCOSUR/MER-COSUL) region of South America, at a time when MERCOSUR member states opened their economies to global competition and to participation in an ambitious subregional economic integration project. This Agenda Paper provides an overview of the factors that have contributed to this recent industry transformation. The paper also examines the factors involved in the formal incorporation of the automotive sector into the MERCOSUR project and discusses the impact this development is like-ly have on the subregional automobile industry,
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, South America, Latin America, and North America

55. Preferential Treatment in Trade: Is There Any Room Left in the Americas?

Author:
Fernando Masi
Publication Date:
08-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
This paper evaluates the costs and benefits of changes brought by the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) on special and differential treatment (S); shows how these changes affected the new regional integration processes in the American continent; and examines whether this issue is still a priority of developing countries' agendas. Large concessions offered by developing countries in exchange for access to markets automatically led to “trade graduation.” Thus, S has lost its former significance among developing countries. Moreover, nonreciprocal treatment was retained for least developed countries, which do not even enjoy this type of treatment under the so-called “new trade-related issues” of services, investment, and intellectual property rights.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, America, South America, Latin America, Central America, Caribbean, and North America

56. Chile/Argentina — Economic Fallout

Publication Date:
12-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxford Analytica
Abstract:
This week's piece examines the impact of Argentina's economic difficulties on Chilean firms. As well as its macroeconomic impact in Chile, reflected principally in currency volatility and a reduction of capital inflows, the Argentine crisis is affecting Chilean firms with investments in or exports to Argentina. It will also have an impact on Chile's tourist industry. Following the exit of many Chilean firms from Argentina over the last two years, those that remain are either in export sectors or have a long-term strategy under which they appear willing to ride out the present crisis. However, many will sustain short-term losses and some smaller investors, particularly in consumer sectors, may be forced out of the market.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Politics
Political Geography:
Argentina, South America, and Chile

57. The 'Labour Question' in Nineteenth Century Brazil: Railways, Export Agriculture and Labour Scarcity

Author:
Lucia Lamounier
Publication Date:
10-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
This paper examines changing patterns of labour relations in nineteenth-century Brazil associated with the building of railways and expansion of export agriculture. It addresses the 1850s-1880s period, decades when the `labour question' became a pressing issue for contemporaries. The extinction of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1850 posed the problem of finding alternative supplies of labour at a time of increasing agro-export production. In 1852 effective action to start the building of railways was taken. As part of efforts to improve conditions in the sugar and coffee sectors, several concessions were approved. From the middle of the century through to the 1870s, the expansion of coffee cultivation and railway construction were closely inter-related phenomena in the southern provinces of Brazil and shaped the debate about labour. The 1870s was a key decade. First, these years witnessed a `railway mania' - a great fever of building new lines and branches in various regions of the country, especially in the new coffee districts. Second, concern about the labour question intensified with the approval in 1871 of the Rio Branco Law which provided for the gradual emancipation of slaves. From then until 1888, when slavery was finally abolished, several policies were implemented trying to solve the problem of labour supply and to set new patterns of labour relations. This involved the arrival of thousands of immigrants in the 1880s, imported with government aid, to support the near-continuous expansion of coffee cultivation.
Topic:
Economics, Industrial Policy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Brazil and South America

58. The Politics of Free Trade in the Western Hemisphere

Author:
Manuel Pastor and Carol Wise
Publication Date:
08-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
Just as the 1980s now stand out as the decade of the debt crisis in Latin America, the 1990s have become the free trade decade. After a number of failed attempts at trade liberalization during the 1970s, many states in the region now have made dramatic progress in their efforts to reduce tariffs and eliminate quantitative restrictions (QRs) (see Table 1). The strongest evidence of this new openness is reflected in Mexico's 1994 entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States and Canada, the stated intention at the 1994 Summit of the Americas in Miami to develop a plan for the full expansion of hemispheric free trade, and the ongoing consolidation of such subregional trade pacts as South America's Southern Cone Common Market (MER - COSUR), including Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay.
Topic:
Development, Government, Industrial Policy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, Canada, Brazil, South America, Uruguay, Caribbean, North America, and Paraguay

59. National Laws, NAFTA Panels and Multilateral Provisions: Sovereignty or Supranational Rules at Bay

Author:
Imtiaz Hussain
Publication Date:
03-1995
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
Extending a previous investigation of farm dispute settlement under the Canadian-U.S. Free Trade Agreement of 1989 to include the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994, this study inquires if regionalism in this part of the world threatens the sovereignty of national trade laws and multilateral provisions. The adjudication process, spelled out by Chapter 19 of the two free trade agreements, is singled out and disaggregated into four stages for analysis. This, in turn, allows for (a) a reassessment of the sovereignty-supranational theoretical debate; and (b) undertaking a comparative study of the national trade relief laws in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Whereas extant works, almost exclusively of disputes under G.A.T.T., find that supranational rules influence outcomes more than the pursuit of sovereign interests by states, the preliminary findings of this study suggest that both forces are equally strong in North America. By and large, they suggest that reciprocal relations between states, regional entities, and multilateral organizations are necessary for the viable operation of each; yet this necessity may, in the long-term, constrain the multilateral organization more than the regional. This interpenetrating relationship is unique, and the source of institutional innovations of relevance to the pursuit of both state sovereignty and supranationalism.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
United States, Canada, South America, North America, and Mexico