ABSTRACT
This chapter describes that the regionalization process formalized under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has become a major strategy of US trade diplomacy for advancing and expanding a new regulatory framework for dealing with the pressures of globalization. It suggests that regional clubs are called for to play a major role in better internalizing global rules at the bilateral level. The chapter explains how Washington conceived NAFTA as an interface between multilateral and bilateral policies, and between a North–South agenda. It attempts to calculate a balance sheet of regional experiences, at least in some key domains. Regimes are important because of their direct impact on the exercise of relational power, that is, in the way regimes shape actors’ policy options and behavior.
