01675nam a2200121Ia 4500 20260716043321.0 ROSENTHAL, Gert Regional integration in the 1990s. 1993 Examines the reawakened interest in intraregional cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean. Concludes that (1) economic integration can enhance competitiveness in the international market; (2) recent intra-Latin American integration pacts abide by the spirit and letter of GATT while seeking to raise the level of competitiveness and promote market diversification; (3) as the globalisaton of the economy proceeds, tariff preferences as well as rules of origin and safeguards are taking on a different meaning from what they signified in a situation marked by high levels of tariff protection; (4) the diversity of existing regional integration movements makes it difficult to envision the configuration of a regionwide free trade area in the foreseeable future; (5) there is a limit to how many agreements there can be, since, under certain circumstances, different agreements could conflict with one another; (6) in situations where the countries engage in a considerable volume of reciprocal trade, have similar production structures and are geographic neighbours, there will be a strong tendency to complement a free trade area or a system of trade preferences with a common tariff in order to ward off distortions in resource allocation and to avoid encouraging contraband trade; (7) trade preferences can and should be complemented by other joint measures to resolve shared problems in a wide range of areas. 3/7/00 M2LMGR A 44755 44755