Liberalization of Trade in Services: Options and Implications

Latin American and Caribbean countries face a far-reaching and complex agenda of negotiations in the area of trade in services. First, periodic rounds of negotiations under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in the World Trade Organization (WTO) will lead to further commitments and reformed multilateral norms and disciplines. Second, at the hemispheric level, countries are discussing a draft text of the Free Trade Area of the Amerièas (FTAA) that includes liberalization of trade in services. Furthermore, trade in services is dealt with at the sub-regional level by various integration agreements, such as the Mercosur Protocol of Montevideo, Decision 439 of the Andean Community (AC) and Protocol II of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) countries, as well as in bilateral free trade agreements covering services signed by several Latin American countries. Finally, this issue is ever present in trade initiatives being advanced at other levels, such as in the EU-Mexico Trade Agreement and in the framework for an EU-Mercosur agreement. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.