Romney Backs Latin American Free-Trade Zone, Adviser Says
Romney Backs Latin American Free-Trade Zone, Adviser Says
AS/COA's Vice President Eric Farnsworth comments on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's proposal to establish a free hemispheric trade zone in Latin America.
As president, Mitt Romney would seek to form a hemispheric trade zone with Latin American countries, his top adviser on trade policy said, reprising a similar plan that stalled seven years ago.
“The first thing we’d like to do is stitch up the agreements we have” with Central and South American nations, former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who is now advising the Romney campaign, said yesterday during an interview in Washington. It’s “an effort to make the hemisphere more globally competitive.”
Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and President Barack Obama have talked about boosting exports and increasing enforcement of international trade rules during a political season in which job creation is a top priority. The Obama administration and officials from eight other nations are negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade pact that will probably include Mexico and Canada by the end of the year.
Romney’s trade policy “will probably be focused primarily, but not exclusively, on Latin America” and the Western Hemisphere, Gutierrez said. “We also need to be very aggressive in Asia,” including completing the Pacific trade accord and establishing new free-trade agreements in the region.
Efforts to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas, which would have included 34 nations within the Western Hemisphere, stalled in 2005 after opposition from Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela, according to the Congressional Research Service….
“Conceptually, it’s a good idea,” Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas in Washington, said of the Romney proposal. “It would certainly be more meaningful with Brazil,” the largest economy in South America, he said in a phone interview….
