NAFTA/FTAA and the new articulations in the Americas: Seizing structural opportunities

This article seeks to provide an understanding of how the reconfiguring Americas present new contingencies for the competing sovereign states therein. Many perceptions abound on the North American Free Trade Agreement/Free Trade Area of the Americas (NAFTA/FTAA) process. These range from the unfounded optimism of liberal political economy adherents, to the outright cynicism of the radical persuasion. A significant cross-section of commentators from countries in the weaker half of the Basin, particularly those that make up the Commonwealth Caribbean, are not persuaded that NAFTA and other macro-phenomena offer any hope for countries in the periphery. This paper looks at NAFTA and how it has affected the three countries involved thus far. It returns to the challenge that the new mapping of the Americas poses for countries therein. My simple claim is that the FTAA process presents a structural opportunity for aspirant countries across the Americas to recoup their declining development fortunes. The winners will be from among those countries that restructure their political-economic base while rigourously negotiating their terms of entry into the FTAA. The aim here is to avoid the over-schematisation that abounds between optimists and pessimists, ie liberals and structuralists. Neither widespread prosperity nor pervasive economic despair will greet the western hemisphere following the establishment of a free trade bloc. Indeed, much of the outcome will be politically determined and cannot be entirely 'read off' from existing economic structures and relationships.