Geo-Economic Competition in Latin America: Brazil, Venezuela, and Regional Integration in the 21st Century

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guilherme Casarões
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
Free Trade Area ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Competition ◽  
Integration Model ◽  
Trade Area ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
The Us ◽  
New Institutions

The institutional framework of Latin American integration saw a period of intense transformation in the 2000s, with the death of the ambitious project of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), spearheaded by the United States, and the birth of two new institutions, the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). This article offers a historical reconstruction of regional integration structures in the 2000s, with emphasis on the fault lines between Brazil, Venezuela and the US, and how they have shaped the institutional order across the hemisphere. We argue that the shaping of UNASUR and CELAC, launched respectively in 2007 and 2010, is the outcome of three complex processes: (1) Brazil’s struggle to strengthen Mercosur by acting more decisively as a regional paymaster; (2) Washington’s selective engagement with some key regional players, notably Colombia, and (3) Venezuela’s construction of an alternative integration model through the Bolivarian Alliance (ALBA) and oil diplomacy. If UNASUR corresponded to Brazil’s strategy to neutralize the growing role of Caracas in South America and to break apart the emerging alliance between Venezuela, Argentina, and Bolivia, CELAC was at the same time a means to keep the US away from regional decisions, and to weaken the Caracas-Havana axis that sustained ALBA.

scholarly journals MOVIMIENTOS SOCIALES E INTEGRACIÓN REGIONAL: EL CASO DE LA ARTICULACIÓN DE MOVIMIENTOS SOCIALES HACIA EL ALBA

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (16) ◽  
pp. 157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karla Díaz Martínez
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
Free Trade Area ◽  
Trade Area ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Entity ◽  
The Us ◽  
America Latina ◽  
Movimientos Sociales

El ALBA es un espacio de integración regional, alternativo al alca propuesto por EEUU, que inaugura una etapa denominada regionalismo posneoliberal. El ALBA desde sus orígenes ha contado con el acompañamiento de movimientos sociales de carácter antiimperialista y antineoliberal. La propia organización generó una instancia social: el Consejo de Movimientos Sociales; sin embargo, los movimientos sociales han generado de forma paralela y autónoma la Articulación de Movimientos Sociales hacia el ALBA. Este trabajo da cuenta de las características de este espacio de articulación social, a partir de propuestas teóricas pensadas en América Latina, y presenta un balance de las potencialidades y los desafíos de los movimientos sociales en el escenario latinoamericano y su influencia en la integración regional.   SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND REGIONAL INTEGRATION: THE ARTICULATION OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS TOWARD ALBAABSTRACTALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas) is a regional integration entity created as an alternative to the US-proposed FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas, ALCA in Spanish). ALBA inaugurates a period that has been referred to as post-neoliberal regionalism. Since its origin, ALBA has been accompanied by social movements with an anti-imperialistic and anti-neoliberal stance. ALBA, itself, generated a social entity: the Social Movements Council. However, in a parallel and autonomous way, the social movements created the Articulation of Social Movements toward ALBA. This article describes the characteristics of this entity for social articulation based on theoretical proposals developed in Latin America, and presents a balance of the potentialities and challenges of social movements in Latin America and their incidence in regional integration.

scholarly journals Science, Technology & Innovation and Intellectual Property: Leveraging Openness for Sustainable Development in Africa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Ncube
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
Free Trade Area ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Bilateral Agreements ◽  
Trade Area ◽  
The Us ◽  
Development Context

2020 was an eventful year for the whole world, as a public health and economic crisis raged, bringing to the fore the perennial challenge of how to craft and use Intellectual Property (IP) institutions, law, policies and practices, collectively ‘IP frameworks’ to add to efforts to achieve sustainable development, and to consider recovery paths for economies. This coincided with intensified efforts to boost intra-African trade and enhance regional integration through the Agreement on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which has been ratified at the fastest rate, to date, of any African Union (AU) instrument. The US entered into negotiations for a bilateral FTA with Kenya, which, if successful, would be the first in Southern Africa and the first since the coming into force of the AfCFTA Agreement. This book engages with this challenge in its six chapters. The introductory Chapter One includes a brief overview of the AU, its member states, its institutions and legal norms to emphasise both the context and the diversity of the continent. It introduces and links STI and IP within a knowledge governance context as the analytical lens through which the book’s further discussions are framed. The international and African development agendas are also explained and distinguished from each other to foreground the following chapters. Chapter Two considers the global IP framework with an account of minimum standards in international agreements. Chapter Three turns to the African continent and provides a commentary on national and regional IP frameworks, as contrasted with the global framework. It considers plurilateral and bilateral agreements including the possibilities and significance of the US-Kenya FTA. It reprises the IP instruments of the regional IP organisations and the Regional Economic Communities. Chapter Four considers STI and sustainable development, paying specific attention to the creation of an enabling environment for STI and also to how STI policies interface with IP. Chapter Five reiterates the trade and sustainable development context of IP as the foundation to a consideration of examples of how openness is being leveraged to meet current developmental challenges through STI on the continent. It spotlights some entries at the COVID-19 Innovation Challenge held during the Africa Innovation and Investment Forum 2020 together with the continent’s commitment to Open Science. Against the background of the preceding chapters, Chapter Six discusses the continental IP institutional reform and policy rejuvenation that would come from the operationalisation of PAIPO and the conclusion of the AfCFTA IP Protocol. It concludes with some policy legislative implications for IP and STI at continental level, that ought to be borne in mind as states calibrate their IP frameworks.

scholarly journals A Solution for Africa

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Collins
Keyword(s):  
Free Trade ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
Market Integration ◽  
Free Trade Area ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Majority Voting ◽  
Regional Environment ◽  
Trade Area ◽  
The Eu

Regionalism—the efforts of a group of nations to enhance their economic, political, social, and cultural interaction—can assume various forms, including regional integration/cooperation, market integration, development integration, with the intent of accommodating the changing national, international, and regional environment. Despite the fact that to this day, attempts at integration (in particular, market integration based on the EU model) and regionalist impulses as they currently occur have been entirely unproductive throughout the African continent, regionalism continues to be regarded by African leaders as a reasonable strategy for increasing intra-regional trade and for reversing Africa’s rising marginalization in the world economy. They continue to be assured by the success of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the viability of the European Union’s (EU) model for integration, which begins with a free trade area or preferential trade area and ends with complete economic integration. The EU model features a specific mode of decision making (qualified majority voting), conflict resolution mechanism (role of the European Court of Justice), budgetary arrangements (revenue collection and distribution), and citizen involvement (direct elections to the European Parliament) and takes on increasingly state-like functions. While extremely successful in integrating its constituent member state in Europe, as a model it is limited, given the unique circumstances under which it was established and promoted. As noted by Emil Kirchner: Consideration of the EU as a model for other regional integration settings might be limited, given the unique circumstances in which it was established and promoted. Born out of conflict, the EU benefited from special circumstances in its development, e.g. the Cold War, the United States guarantee and nurturing role, and the industrialised nature of the European economies, which are not found elsewhere.

scholarly journals The FTAA as a Three-level Bargaining Game

2009 ◽  
Vol 34 (133) ◽  
Author(s):  
ANIL HIRA
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Bargaining Power ◽  
Bilateral Trade ◽  
Free Trade Area ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
The United States ◽  
Trade Area ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Latin American Countries ◽  
Dynamic Shape

This paper applies Putnam’s (1993) seminal work on negotiations as a two level game, to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations process. The paper compares the domestic ratification processes with the existing web of regional and bilateral trade agreements for insights into the relative bargaining strength and key issues for the most important economies in the hemisphere: the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Mexico. This paper delivers important insights into how the existing international and domestic legal and political context will affect the dynamic shape of FTAA negotiations, with the aim of finding strategies by which Latin American countries (LACs) can maximize their bargaining power.

scholarly journals Latin America’s Decentred Economic Regionalism: From the FTAA to the Pacific Alliance

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-359
Author(s):  
Jean Santos Lima
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Regional Cooperation ◽  
Free Trade Area ◽  
Global Competitiveness ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
Trade Area ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Us ◽  
Regional Leadership ◽  
Political Economic

Abstract In this article, I examine Latin American regionalism from the collapse of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) to the emergence and development of the Pacific Alliance (PA) in the period 2005 to 2015. For most of the research, I use the main economic blocs in the region, Mercosur as well as the PA, as the units of analysis. The main findings are that since the FTAA’s collapse, integration processes have become more heterogeneous; that Mercosur and the PA contrast with one another in political-economic terms; that the Brazilian project of establishing a post-liberal/post-hegemonic regionalism in South America has not succeeded; and that regional demand for Brazilian products is at risk of shifting to other markets in the medium to long term, thus further undermining its aspirations towards regional leadership. All of this is evidence of a decentred economic regionalism – that is, a form of regionalism in which no single state is in central command, or has enough followers to assume leadership and establish a dominant conception of integration and regional cooperation. Other factors contributing to this decentralisation are the poor economic performance of Brazil and Mexico, and the US government’s changed attitude towards trade relations with Latin America. Despite this, I argue that Latin American countries do need to strengthen cooperation within and among these regional blocs, aimed at promoting their joint global competitiveness. This will require cooperation rather than coercion, and networks and connectivity rather than hierarchies.

The US Struggles in APEC’s Trade Politics: Coalition-Building and Regional Integration in the Asia-Pacific

2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takashi Terada
Keyword(s):  
Regional Integration ◽  
Critical Mass ◽  
Free Trade Area ◽  
Economic Cooperation ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Primary Role ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Trade Area ◽  
The Us

Abstract From a perspective of change in the institution’s function, the history of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) can be divided into four periods: 1989–1995, 1996–2001, 2001–2006, and 2007–present. APEC’s activities in each of these periods have been organized around major themes: respectively, the establishment of guidelines for liberalization; the implementation of liberalization measures; security issues such as counter-terrorism; and the establishment of a free trade area. American political will can be seen as a major driving force behind these changes in APEC’s agenda-setting. However, norm setting during the first and second periods encountered objections from China and Japan, respectively. During the third period, the Bush administration’s interest in combating terrorism through APEC was not supported by Asian members, who emphasized APEC’s primary role as a framework for economic cooperation, instead placed higher priorities on East Asian regionalism that excluded the US. In light of this shift, in the fourth period, the US once again urged that APEC should be used as a framework for liberalization and pushed for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This period saw the discriminatory, legally-binding and reciprocity-based norms for trade liberalization take root in APEC, resulting largely from the American coalition-building approach through the promotion of the TPP as an existing integration framework. This has helped to create a critical mass while competition with China over regional trade policies becomes more intense, demonstrating the case where the US successfully set its own preferred agenda and norm together for the first time.

The Political Economy of MERCOSUR

1994 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 101-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luigi Manzetti
Keyword(s):  
Free Trade ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
Free Trade Area ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Trade Patterns ◽  
Research Technology ◽  
Trade Area ◽  
The North ◽  
Economic Trends

Recent literature on regional integration has stressed the key role that emerging trading blocs will have in shaping the world economy of the 21st-century. With the end of the Cold War, policymakers have refocused their attention on economic issues. Economic trends — such as rapid changes in research, technology, capital flow, and trade patterns — have assumed a new importance. Increasing competition in world markets has induced industrialized countries to cluster together in regional economic blocs. This has been the case with the European Community (EC), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signatories (the United States, Canada, and Mexico), and possibly Japan and its East Asian neighbors. However, these experiments in regional integration differ appreciably in nature. For instance, the EC explicitly seeks an economic and political union, whereas the NAFTA is simply a free trade area whose goal is the eventual elimination of restrictions on investment flows.

scholarly journals Drug prices in Latin American countries: the case of rheumatoid arthritis Biosimilars

2021 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela Bittencourt Gonzalez Mosegui ◽  
Fernando Antõnanzas ◽  
Cid Manso de Mello Vianna ◽  
Paula Rojas
Keyword(s):  
Rheumatoid Arthritis ◽  
United States ◽  
Latin American ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Purchasing Power Parity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Power Parity ◽  
Drug Prices ◽  
The Us ◽  
Latin American Countries

Abstract Background The objective of this paper is to analyze the prices of biological drugs in the treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) in three Latin American countries (Brazil, Colombia and Mexico), as well as in Spain and the United States of America (US), from the point of market entry of biosimilars. Methods We analyzed products authorized for commercialization in the last 20 years, in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, comparing them to the United States of America (USA) and Spain. For this analysis, we sought the prices and registries of drugs marketed between 1999 and October 1, 2019, in the regulatory agencies’ databases. The pricing between countries was based on purchasing power parity (PPP). Results The US authorized the commercialization of 13 distinct biologicals and four biosimilars in the period. Spain and Brazil marketed 14 biopharmaceuticals for RA, ten original, four biosimilars. Colombia and Mexico have authorized three biosimilars in addition to the ten biological ones. For biological drug prices, the US is the most expensive country. Spain’s price behavior seems intermediate when compared to the three LA countries. Brazil has the highest LA prices, followed by Mexico and Colombia, which has the lowest prices. Spain has the lowest values in PPP, compared to LA countries, while the US has the highest prices. Conclusion The economic effort that LA countries make to access these medicines is much higher than the US and Spain. The use of the PPP ensured a better understanding of the actual access to these inputs in the countries analyzed.

scholarly journals ANALYSIS OF RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE UNITED STATES IN THE PERIOD THE PRESIDENCY OF DONALD TRUMP (2017-2020)

2020 ◽  
pp. 35-39
Author(s):  
Andrei Martynov ◽  
Sergey Asaturov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
European Union ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
United Arab Emirates ◽  
Migration Policy ◽  
Free Trade Area ◽  
The United States ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Trade Area

The European Union has met Donald Trump's presidency in a crisis, caused by Britain's exit, quarrels over migration policy and prospects for European integration. Trump has abandoned a project to create a transatlantic free trade area. He demanded a one-sided trade advantage for the United States. The rejection of the liberal project of multilateral foreign policy contributed to the deepening of contradictions between the EU and the US in the field of trade, environment, the regime of international disarmament treaties, the algorithm for resolving regional conflicts. The Trump era in US foreign policy was a time of abandoning liberal globalism. But it is impossible to realize this task in one cadence. The question is whether it is possible for Democrats to fully restore liberal globalism in equal cooperation with the European Union.Trump has abandoned the project of a transatlantic free trade area between the United States and the European Union. This shocked the European elites. Differences in approaches to world trade contributed to the coolness. The European Union is promoting a liberal approach. Trump insisted on the priority of the patronage of American interests. As a result, the tradition of relationships has suffered. Until 2017, the United States bought European goods and paid the most to the NATO budget. Trump demanded trade parity and more European funding for NATO. European elites perceived Trump's approach to migration issues as unacceptable. Trump's policy on international conflicts has become another reason for mutual misunderstanding. Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and helped establish diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. This has become a challenge for the European Union's Middle East policy.

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