ABSTRACT
Negotiations for a Free Trade Area for the Americas are an important step along the road to Western Hemispheric integration. The alternatives are multilateral liberalization or market-driven integration, a route followed in East Asia for many years. Indeed, as integration deepens in the European single market project, free trade agreements (FTAs) are coming to be regarded as relatively modest starting points for intergovernmental arrangements. Even so, in some Latin American countries significant political reservations remain about this route to better market access within the hemisphere; neither are special interests silent in North America.
