Executive Summary

         As members of a university research group studying integration in the Americas, our primary interest in participating is to following the course of negotiations aimed at designing the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The basic frame of reference for our analysis is the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA): the role that it can play as a model for integration and its ability to merge with other economic integration movements taking place within the Western Hemisphere.
         Mexico’s unique geographical and economic position as an immediate neighbor of the United States and the only developing country in Latin America which has signed a trade liberalization agreement with the predominant nation of the Americas, is the element motivating us to participate in the FTAA discussions, considering the dynamics of the characteristics surrounding efforts to link the countries of the hemisphere.
        The aspects on which we will place greatest priority in our studies are: access to markets; subsidies, antidumping measures and countervailing duty; dispute settlement mechanisms, competition policies and intellectual property rights. Following a summary of this diverse range of topics, we will review the history of their development in course of Mexico’s relationship within NAFTA, and particularly in its bilateral trade with the United States; as well as ramifications for the possible technical management of these topics within the scope of relations with the various integration movements to be described under the FTAA.