ABSTRACT
The action agendas attached to the agreements included North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)-style items such as zero tariffs, removal of nontariff barriers, an open investment climate, and full protection of intellectual property rights. Yet even NAFTA, a regional initiative par excellence, can be seen in the multilateral interest, insofar as it showed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiators of the Uruguay Round that agreement was possible on such complex issues as trade in services, trade-related investment, intellectual property rights, and dispute settlement. US support for Western Hemisphere Free Trade Area might send the wrong signals to its main trade partners in the industrialized North and adversely affect relations with them. The GATT success will promote Latin American exports and so reinforce domestic economic reforms; on the other, it will brake unilateralism in the United States and inhibit protectionist impulses both there and in the EC.
