Trade Liberalization In The Western Hemisphere

A Brookings Institution Press and the Organization of American States publication The services sector—including financial services, telecommunications, transportation, tourism, and professional services—has become critical to the continued economic dynamism in the Americas. And the quality and competitiveness of this sector are essential to economic growth and development. On average, services—increasingly traded in more numerous and far-reaching ways than goods—account for nearly two-thirds of the gross domestic product of the Western Hemisphere. The importance of the sector, however, is disproportionately large in Central America and the Caribbean, where it often is the major source of employment and of foreign exchange.This timely volume is the first to review and analyze trade agreements covering the services sector in the Western Hemisphere and their relationship to the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), in force since 1995 as an integral part of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Negotiations on liberalizing services trade are continuing at the multilateral, the regional or hemispheric, and the subregional levels. It is imperative to understand what is being discussed and implemented at these different levels and to articulate the linkages and relationships among the various agreements and the disciplines and obligations they contain. Services Trade in the Western Hemisphere informs the reader about these issues and more. Part 1 deals with the main issues relevant to the liberalization of services trade at the multilateral and regional levels, including improvements to the GATS architecture, the scope of regulatory reform, the relationship between the treatment of services and investment, WTO requirements that must be fulfilled by parties to an economic integration agreement, and disagreements brought to the multilateral dispute settlement process. Part 2 examines the scope, content, and liberalizing approach of subregional agreements in the Western Hemisphere, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and those p

Since 1889, The American Academy of Political and Social Science has served as a forum for the free exchange of ideas among the well informed and intellectually curious. In this era of specialization, few scholarly periodicals cover the scope of societies and politics like The ANNALS. Each volume is guest edited by outstanding scholars and experts in the topics studied and presents more than 200 pages of timely, in-depth research on a significant topic of concern-- http://ann.sagepub.com.

What is the Latin America (LA) perception of NAFTA? Is NAFTA the route to western hemisphere integration? What should be the relationship between NAFTA and the other LA trade arrangements, more specifically, the relation between NAFTA and MERCOSUR? What can LA learn from Canada with respect to having a close trade partnership with the United States? This book provides a Latin American and a Canadian view of western hemisphere integration. There are suggestions in order to achieve a convergence in both perceptions.