Panama and Mexico are there as observers. Only French Guiana has opted out.
All the rest of South America is creating UNASUR, a sort of Schengen-like zone.
This should be instructive for several reasons:
- Will our Latin neighbours do better than the European Union in managing free trade and free movement of people and capital?
- Will this new ‘bloc’ have an impact on the widely hyped (and secretive and feared) Trans Pacific Partnership? (This was a pet project of Canada’s previous Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, who kept all the details secret while claiming we could not afford to be left out.)
- Will this new bloc include TPP-like proposals that allow an international company to sue a national government (successfully) for passing laws that merely reduce its profit potential?
- Some of the countries south of the USA are in, to put it nicely, financial difficulty. Argentina is in trouble. Venezuela is close to broke. Even Brazil has inflation challenges. Will our southern neighbours do better than the EU did in managing Greece (and Spain and Portugal and Cyprus, to name a few)?
Comments, anyone?