Unintended consequences
Thursday, April 15, 2004 at 1:19PM There goes my honey! There goes my baby! There goes my free trade zone!
REFERENCE: (10) ìLatin America Warms Up to EU in Trade Talks,î by Geraldo Samor and Scott Miller, WSJ, 15 April, p. A13.
To me, this is a scary article of sorts, like the one the Wall Street Jouranl ran a while back about how emigration flows coming out of Latin America are being redirected from the U.S. as a landing zone to Europe as a landing zone. In that example, the tighter U.S. borders resulting from the post-9/11 rule-set reset were cited, meaning bin Laden apparently has the power to attack the U.S. andóby doing soódeny us access to immigration patterns we hadóup to that pointóassumed would favor us over the Europeans.
What this article describes is a Latin America, tired of the lack of progress on trade negotiations for a Free Trade Area of the Americas, instead turning to an EU for similar-style negotiations. The negotiations in question concern the EU and Mercosur, or the economic trade alliance of more than 200 million citizens in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, with less integrated levels of association involving Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela. You have to wonder, is this another unintended consequence not of 9/11 per se, but of Americaís response to 9/11?
If so, bin Ladenís ability to bend global history is far more than we realize, yes?
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