Chile’s Trade Policy: an Assessment

This paper reviews some of the main findings of recent research on the politics, economics and political economy of regional integration, and assesses Chile's trade and regional integration policies. It concludes that i) Chile is likely to obtain static and dynamic benefits from a FTA with the US, though the benefits depend crucially on the extent to which its market access to the US improves, and on the cost of implementing the intellectual property rights agreement and on the cost of the rules of origin; ii) benefits are more doubtful with respect to FTAs with MERCOSUR and Andean Pact and Central American countries; iii) Chile is negotiating with the EU and should start negotiating FTAs with Asian countries; iv) it should bind all its tariffs at the WTO at the applied MFN uniform tariff rate; and v) the uniform MFN tariff should be reduced below 6% after 2003.