FTAs in the Americas

Abstract

A substantial number of countries of the Americas, in addition to the United States, have free-trade agreements with each other, with countries from other continents, as well as being part of regional agreements. Canada and Mexico, the other parties to NAFTA, each have negotiated several FTAs although not all have significant environmental provisions — that is, those other than the exceptions related to GATT Article XX. With the exception of Mexico, countries that have negotiated trade agreements with the US or Canada have tended to include some environmental provisions in many of their other agreements, although Mexico has included provisions in some of its more recent FTAs. Historically, there were a number of regional agreements in Latin America aimed at economic integration, but until recently few have been effective at liberalizing trade to a significant degree and environmental measures were not a factor in their activities, although ALADI (Spanish acronym for Latin American Integration Association) did mention the environment as an area for potential further integration.¹ It was only after NAFTA that Canada and Mexico (as well as the United States), followed by other hemispheric countries, became active in negotiating FTAs with, in some cases, environmental provisions.