Multilateralising RTAs in the Americas: State of Play and Ways Forward

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent of liberalisation in RTAs in the Americas in comparison to agreements in other world regions, and to put forth policy recommendations for multilateralising the regional RTAs. While primarily focusing on market access in goods-and tariff liberalisation schedules, in particular-we also explore the regional RTAs' employment of rules of origin, investment, and services provisions. While the analysis centres on the depth of liberalisation accomplished by the region's RTAs, we preliminarily investigate the extent to which the regional RTAs feature "open regionalism"-liberalisation vis-à-vis third parties.