THE NEW BILATERAL REGIONAL FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS IN THE AMERICAS CAN THE SMALLER ECONOMIES OF LATIN AMERICA AND CARICOM BENEFIT?

Regional Trade Agreements have proliferated in the past two decades. Most recently the United States has spearheaded a drive for comprehensive bilateral free trade agreements with a number of countries including with those of Latin America. The bilateral free trade agreements are WTO plus, very comprehensive and extremely similar in their structure and content. It can be easily argued that the new bilateral negotiations are in fact a gradual piecemeal approach to a single free trade agreement with the rest of the world through an approach whereby countries are added on a gradual basis. The bilateral agreements will eventually converge to an overall encompassing multilateral one giving credence to the consequent improvement in welfare hypothesized by free trade advocates. From our point of view, however, the content of these free trade agreements raise important issues and concerns for the smaller economies of Latin America and CARICOM. The paper examines the main features of the new bilateral free trade agreements giving particular emphasis to their investment provisions. It also examines formally the conditions required for smaller economies to benet from free trade in goods, services and free capital mobility. On the basis of this analysis the paper presents a discussion of some of the main implications of the new free trade agreements for Latin American and CARICOM smaller economies. 1 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Trinidad and Tobago and ECLAC (Santiago, Chile).The opinions here expressed are the authors ’ own and may not coincide with those of ECLAC or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Trinidad and Tobago. Comments are welcome and can be sent t