ABSTRACT
Mercosur is the fourth-largest trading bloc, and home to a Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC) member. The common market project requires Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and recent member Venezuela to integrate their markets and policies more deeply than would be required of a simple free trade area (FTA). A series of economic upheavals in its two prime engines, Brazil and Argentina, revealed snakes in the integration garden and began stymieing the project. Mercosur’s founding had an explicit economic purpose that would also serve the strategy of political leaders advancing open-economy models of political survival. Mercosur trade rose but remains lower than any year between 1992 and 2001. Member trade flows partially account for this trend. Brazil’s interests-given its large economy-were beyond Mercosur; Brazil’s trade accounted for 71 percent of Mercosur’s total trade in 2010. Its intraregional trade as share of total trade remained relatively flat after 2001, the lowest of the four.
