"U.S. Representative Sherrod Brown - a leading progressive voice in Congress - takes apart free-trade dogma, myth by myth." "Ten years after NAFTA, free-trade policies have not brought prosperity to Mexican workers, and more than one million American jobs have been lost as a result of the agreement. Do free-trade pacts foster democracy? Brown examines the facts. Are fast-track agreements necessary to fight the war on terrorism? Brown dissects the arguments and the evidence."--BOOK JACKET.

The vision of a hemispheric system of free trade charts a bold new course for U.S--Latin American relations that promises to transform the economic and political landscape of the hemisphere well into the next century. In "The Premise and the Promise, "analysts from the United States, Latin America, and Canada explore the dynamics of the process under way in the Americas today, what features free trade ought to have, how the process of regional integration should proceed, and how the regional architecture should be related to the international trading system. Mexico's decision to seek a free trade agreement with the United States and Washington's announcement of the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative turned the incipient integrationist revival of the mid-1980s in Latin America into a seemingly unstoppable force. If regionalism is to be a benign force, however, it must overcome the impulse toward closed, exclusionary arrangements and emulate the best features of the multilateral approach: a regional arrangement should be flexible enough to accommodate vast regional diversity, inclusive enough to allow all countries in the region to participate, and efficient enough not to impose unduly large costs on those excluded from the arrangement. The contents include: Sylvia Saborio, "Overview: The Long and Winding Road from Anchorage to Patagonia," Peter Morici, "American Free Trade: A U.S. Perspective," Jos" Salazar and Eduardo Lizano, "Free Trade hi the Americas: A Latin American Perspective," Richard Lipsey, "Getting There: A Canadian View on WHFTA's Structure," and Refik Erzan and Alexander Yeats, "Empirical Evidence on the Impact of Free Trade Agreements with the United States on Latin America." In six separate chapters, analysts weigh the costs and benefits of subregional free trade agreements between the United States and Mexico, Chile, Central America, Caricom, the Andean Pact, and Mercosur.

The face of international trade is continuing to change rapidly. But while much attention is focused on where, post-Cancun, any new international negotiations under the auspices of the WTO may go, there are other developments of potentially equal importance. The United States, in particular, is prioritizing new regional trade agreements. This book focuses on the most ambitious of these negotiations -- the Free Trade Area of the Americas Agreement, which is due to be completed in 2005. This US initiative aims to replicate the NAFTA Agreement (which has bound the US, Canada and Mexico into a free trade area since 1994) across all 34 countries of South and North America (bar Cuba). This huge continental market is to be built around US-defined notions of free trade and protection of foreign investment, but will exclude the free movement of labour. This volume explains the origins and process of the negotiations -- both the complicated multilateral discussions and the bilateral agreements that have already been drafted. It explains in detail: * US strategy. * The structures and procedures of the Agreement. * The possible consequences for South America, including: Mercosur; Brazil, as Latin America's largest economy; and the region's many small economies, which cannot possibly compete on a level playing field with the US behemoth. * The wider implications of the FTAA for the global trading system, in particular for China, Japan and the EU. This book -- the first comprehensive, in-depth study of the FTAA -- will be of use to trade specialists, international economists, and all those interested in the FTAA, about which very little information is readily available in the public domain.

A Brookings Institution Press and the Organization of American States publication In the past 15 years, the nations of the Western Hemisphere have staged a remarkable revolution—in the way they trade with their neighbors. First, after decades of restrictive import policies, several countries began to liberalize their trade and investment regimes. Then, beginning a decade ago, numerous bilateral and sub-regional trade agreements were achieved, to serve as vital complements to domestic reforms and to foster trade flows among member countries. At the Second Summit of the Americas in 1998, negotiations among 34 democracies were launched to establish the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). This report takes stock of the remarkable progress to date in the development of free trade in the Western Hemisphere. It examines trade flows between countries in the same regional groupings and between members of different sub-regional arrangements. The report describes the main characteristics of the trade arrangements signed between countries of the Hemisphere and explores the development of trade rules in these arrangements. Finally, the report details recent advances in the construction of the FTAA.

Despite the passage of NAFTA and other recent free trade victories in the United States, former U.S. trade official Alfred Eckes warns that these developments have a dark side. Opening America's Market offers a bold critique of U.S. trade policies over the last sixty years, placing them within a historical perspective. Eckes reconsiders trade policy issues and events from Benjamin Franklin to Bill Clinton, attributing growing political unrest and economic insecurity in the 1990s to shortsighted policy decisions made in the generation after World War II. Eager to win the Cold War and promote the benefits of free trade, American officials generously opened the domestic market to imports but tolerated foreign discrimination against American goods. American consumers and corporations gained in the resulting global economy, but many low-skilled workers have become casualties. Eckes also challenges criticisms of the 'infamous' protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which allegedly worsened the Great Depression and provoked foreign retaliation. In trade history, he says, this episode was merely a mole hill, not a mountain.

This brilliantly written history of the office of the U.S. Trade Representative illuminates the part this office plays in our evoloving role in the world economy. Dryden traces the deep ambivalence most Americans have about the ideal of free trade, and includes vivid capsule portraits of all the U.S. Trade Representatives.

Globalization and America's Trade Agreements reviews the theoretical framework as well as provides a historic context of impact of the United States’ complex trade agreements of the past 25 years. William Krist analyzes the issues in the recent rounds of GATT/WTO negotiations and in numerous U.S. free trade agreements and discusses how economists have approached trade policy and how historical experience has affected economic theory. He assesses the effect of trade deals on the U.S. economy, the role of foreign policy in trade negotiations, how trade can affect the economies of developing countries, and how environmental and labor concerns affect trade agreements. Trade has been an essential driver of global growth. Krist shows how trade policy has contributed to that growth and outlines what must be done to ensure it can continue to promote our national objectives. This book will serve as a valuable guide for those unfamiliar with trade policy and provides a challenging critique of trade policy for those already knowledgeable in the field.