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Many Doubts About Free Trade for the Americas, report says

by Centre for Economic Policy Research
Will Dreams Of U.S.-Latin America Trade Come True?
As Heads of State Gather In Monterrey, Doubts About the Future of Trade Relations
Thursday, January 8, 2004

Will Dreams Of U.S.-Latin America Trade Come True?
As Heads of State Gather In Monterrey, Doubts About the Future of Trade Relations

President George W. Bush will meet with heads of state from all of the Americas except Cuba at Monterrey, Mexico, beginning Monday (January 12). One of the Administration's main priorities will be to expand commercial relations after recent setbacks at Cancun (WTO Ministerial) in September and Miami (FTAA Ministerial) in November.

But it is not clear that there are gains to be had, for most countries, from increased access to U.S. markets. A new paper by the Center for Economic and Policy Research shows that the U.S. market for imports from other countries can be expected to shrink over the next decade.

"Latin American countries will be competing for shares of a shrinking U.S. market," said economist Mark Weisbrot, co-director of CEPR and co-author, with Dean Baker, of the report.

"Agreements such as the FTAA would probably be a net loss for most countries, since they will make concessions in other areas, yet most will not significantly increase their exports to the U.S.," he added.

Among the areas where Latin American countries are expected to make concessions in order to gain access to U.S. markets are such non-trade areas as intellectual property and rules governing investment and government procurement.

The new paper projects that U.S. imports -- measured in non-dollar terms in order to reflect their value to other countries -- will actually decline. The estimated decline is between $90 billion and $375 billion, in today's (2003) dollars.

The full paper, "Fool's Gold: Projections of the U.S. Import Market," is available at http://www.cepr.net/Import_Projections.pdf .

To schedule briefings with the paper's authors, economists Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot, call or email Todd Tucker 202 293-5380; tucker [at] cepr.net
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