ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the hypothesis that the crises of several Mercosur countries after 2013 might be a product of the inconsistences between the aims of the national policies of these member states and the lack of regional institutions able to guarantee the compatibility between these national policies and the external economic scenario. In external scenario, the birth of Mercosur should not be seen as a stand-alone project of regional integration. It was, firstly and foremostly, a specific "USD 50 billion bet" that US companies made on the future of South American economies, since Mercosur's destiny was to be absorbed by the Free Trade Area of the Americas. But it was also, more comprehensively, conceived by the US as part and parcel of its neoliberal-inspired foreign policy agenda among low- and mid-income countries, commonly known as Washington Consensus. A similar policy also characterized Uruguay and, after change in the political cycle in 2015, Argentina.
