Suchergebnisse

The United States, during the past several years, has squandered a heaven-sent opportunity to cement its already deep economic relations with Latin America. There is no certainty that the neglect will be altered in the near term.A series of transformations made the 1990s an ideal time to consolidate improved economic relations with Latin America. The end of the Cold War meant that US dealings with Latin America could be based on mutual realities in the Hemisphere rather than be shaped through the one-way prism of East-West confrontation. There was a profound paradigm shift that swept just about all the countries of the Hemisphere, away from protectionism and toward open markets as the path to economic growth.

Examines the country's political, economic, and social evolution since 1929; argues for enhanced Mexico-US dialogue in light of Mexico's increasing democratization and economic integration. Topics include NAFTA, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the National Action Party (PAN), and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

Trade policy throughout the Western Hemisphere is in a state of flux, more so now than at any other time in the postwar period. Among policy officials in Latin America, the Caribbean, and North America, there is general agreement on many trade policy issues but uncertainty about others. Although this paper starts with areas of agreement, it focuses upon those issues for which there is no consensus.

U.S. trade policy has four sometimes incompatible strands: multilateralism; preferential bilateralism; preferential regionalism; and unilateral imposition of import restrictions outside the framework of the multilateral structure. President Bush's proposal for free trade in the Western Hemisphere represents one of these elements, but it comes as the other strands are also being pursued in multilateral and North American trade negotiations. President Bush's free trade initiative was warmly received in Latin America and the Caribbean. This is because the region now looks outward toward exports more than at any time since the Great Depression. The feasibility of hemispheric free trade will depend on the extent to which the United States is prepared to discard unilateralism in its protective measures, how far other countries in the region are prepared to open their markets, and how committed they are to cooperating in formulating product and environmental standards and in protecting intellectual property.