Word: mercosur
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...Mercosur represents more than a trading zone to South America's largest nation. It is a sphere of influence and a counterbalance to North American geopolitical clout. With a combined trade volume of $18 billion a year, Mercosur has become the world's third largest market - a distant third - after the European Union and NAFTA. It is also a potent symbol of Brazil's ambition to be a leader of South American unity. Last year the Cardoso government broke new ground at a South American summit, where it argued for the accelerated integration of the continent. "Mercosur is our destiny...
...Brazil already dominates its own Mercosur trading bloc, but it is smaller, weaker and much less sweeping in its free-trade arrangements than NAFTA. Accommodating to proposed FTAA rules that are similar to NAFTA's - the draft text mirrors the NAFTA agreement - is therefore seen as threatening. "Rightly or wrongly, the perception that much is expected from our side while little is offered in exchange is indeed widespread," Brazilian foreign minister Celso Lafer declared in Washington last month...
...Moreover, Mercosur at the moment is even more profoundly concerned than usual with its own weakness. Argentina's financial crisis, which has sopped up some $40 billion in emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund, has put the country virtually into economic receivership. In Buenos Aires last month, the government of President Fernando de la Rua introduced an emergency economic package of tax reforms and business incentives that it hopes will pull the nation back onto its feet. De la Rua also appointed Domingo Cavallo, a renowned free-marketeer, as his latest Finance Minister, with sweeping powers to dictate economic...
...question is whether Mercosur can survive more fraternal quarrels like that one. Chile is just one of several associate Mercosur members that are tilting toward the NAFTA model. Fears of Mercosur's demise are probably exaggerated, but Alberto Pfeifer, executive director of the Latin American Business Council, which is based in São Paulo, agrees that the bloc is at a crossroads. "If it stays as it is now, an incomplete customs union, it will, I would not say perish, but it will be attacked by the ongoing FTAA negotiations...
...from Venezuelan president Chávez, a strident critic of the U.S., who flew down to Brasília last month to say that moving the date forward "would be for us a process of disintegration." Then Chávez asked for Venezuela to become an associate member of Mercosur...