ABSTRACT
This chapter1 will focus primarily on the negotiations between the European Union (EU), Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR) and the United States but will also attempt to explain why each of these actors, while unsuccessfully negotiating agreements among themselves, are successful in completing FTAs with other members of the western hemisphere. On 23 February 2005, Robert B. Zoellick, the US Trade Representative, failed to reach an agreement with his Canadian and Latin American counterparts for the establishment of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Negotiations for the FTAA began in 1994 with the idea of establishing a FTA that would include all the economies of the western hemisphere, except Cuba (34 in all). The potential total market size is estimated to be 923.8 million people with a total output of $22.3 trillion in 2011, of which the US would account for about 67 per cent of the total.2 The US already established trade agreements with the following countries of the western hemisphere:3
• Canada and Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) (1994);
• Chile (2004); • Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras,
and Nicaragua under the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) (2006);
• Peru (2009); • Panama (2011); and • Colombia (2012).
