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In RealTime posts, PIIE senior staff and colleagues discuss the fast-moving economic news, financial developments, and public policy choices confronting the United States and the world.
Pacific Alliance fever has set in. This trade grouping—which joins together the economies of Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru—is holding its seventh summit on Thursday in the western Colombian city of Cali with more and more attention being paid throughout the region. The alliance has been lauded as “the most exciting thing going on today [...]
President Obama’s fourth visit to Mexico since taking office in 2009 will also be his first under its new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, who took office in December. While some of the discussion is certain to focus on the joint US-Mexican campaign against drug trafficking, that issue, as vital as it is, should not overlook [...]
Hugo Chavez, fiery leader of Venezuela since he took power in a 1999 coup, architect of the 21st century socialism model and dreamer of a united Bolivarian front of South American nations died on March 5 in Caracas. What has been his legacy for Venezuela and the Latin American region? For Venezuela, Chavez’s fourteen years [...]
Today, July 31, 2012, Venezuela officially becomes a full member of the Mercosur customs union. But Venezuela’s accession—nearly a decade in the making—effectively puts to rest the pretense of Mercosur as a serious economic integration arrangement. Mercosur, the acronym for the Common Market of the Southern Cone, started promisingly enough, a political triumph of cooperation [...]
This week marked (hopefully) the beginning of the end of one of the longest-running cases in NAFTA history. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed by the United States Department of Transportation and Mexico’s Secretaries of Transportation and Communication, will bring the United States closer to completing its obligations under the North American Free Trade Agreement [...]
On May 27, 2009, US Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Egyptian Minister of Trade and Industry Rachid Mohamed Rachid agreed to develop a “Plan for a Strategic Partnership” that would “deepen and broaden trade and investment relations.” They directed senior trade officials to develop a program in 90 days to implement the plan. This accord [...]
Two pieces of economic data from the end of last year have made headlines. The first, announced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, on January 9, was that the unemployment rate rose in December from 6.8 to 7.2 percent—obviously bad news. The second item, released by the US Census Bureau, on January 13, was that [...]
It should come as no surprise that Ecuador has become the first Latin American country—and the second country after the Seychelles—to default on its debt since the start of the current financial crisis. In market terms the default, which occurred on December 12, is not a big deal. Ecuador’s debt totals no more than $3.9 [...]