La agenda externa del MERCOSUR: el impacto de negociaciones con el ALCA, la UE y la OMC

The objective of this paper is to contribute to the economic evaluation of the impact on the MERCOSUR countries of the outcomes of three simultaneous negotiations: the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the free trade agreement with the European Union (EU) and the multilateral negotiations within the World Trade Organization (WTO). A quantitative evaluation has been done implementing different simulations with a multi country CGE Model, which include the four MERCOSUR partners. The paper concludes that the welfare impact on the MERCOSUR of these negotiations would be rather small and positive, except in the FTAA scenario where negative results are found for Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. When the negotiations do not include the agricultural sector, the results become negative in most scenarios. The most significant effects of the negotiations would be an increase in trade and a reorientation in favor of the new partners, with detriment for intra- MERCOSUR trade. The difference between the trade effects in a full or a restricted agreement is remarkable for Argentina and Uruguay. In all scenarios MERCOSUR would increase its specialization on agriculture and food, especially in the case of full liberalization between MERCOSUR and the EU. Restricted agreements would neither avoid production decline in some industries nor improve traditional agricultural products and food industries so much as a non-restricted agreement.