The Political Economy of South America Integration After the World Economic Crisis
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Overcoming the Crisis: Economic and Financial Developments in Asia and Europe Edited by Štefan Bojnec, Josef C. Brada, and Masaaki Kuboniwa http://www.hippocampus.si/ISBN/978-961-6832-32-8/contents.pdf The Political Economy of South America Integration after the World Economic Crisis Pedro Paulo Zahluth Bastos1 The paper focus on the hurdles to a deeper economic cooperation in South America, stressing three main aspects: 1) the structure of intra-regional trade, related to the uneven distribution of productive activities across different countries; 2) the main objectives of the three different kinds of States (developmental, resource nationalist, and neoliberal); 3) the new context of international competition brought by the world crisis, given the peculiar mode of operation of foreign affiliates at the manufacture sector in the region, and the Chinese export thrust on local markets. The main conclusion is that there are reasons to expect a deepening of economic rivalries and protectionism which may aggravate uneven development in the region, unless the focus on regional cooperation is (unlikely) enlarged to include productive complementarities in the form of direct allocation of investments, and regional (or at least sub-regional) negotiation with foreign affiliates. JEL F15; F59; O19 INTRODUCTION In the past decade, the deepening of economic integration in South America has become a priority objective of many governments in the region, particularly after the failure of negotiations of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in 2005. The financial and exchange crises at the turn of the millennium had created tensions between partners from different trade agreements within the Latin American Integration Association (LAIA), as protectionist initiatives were taken in the face of balance of payments problems and reduced growth rates. However, at the same time that economic pressures increased, several governments committed to the liberalization agenda of the Washington Consensus were replaced by others who rejected explicitly the neoliberal program and the FTAA, understood as obstacles to development and trade policies more managed by sovereign states (NATANSON, 2008). Simultaneously, initiatives in the political, cultural and defense realms introduced forcefully, in some cases in terms of the rhetoric of good intentions rather than actual practice, new spheres of cooperation in a region where, from the Latin American Free- Trade Association (LAFTA) in the 1960s, to open regionalism in the 1990s, integration initiatives always favored economic issues and, above all, commercial ones. The rejection of the principles of free competition of the FTAA, on behalf of a more coordinated regional integration by the States, brought together some of the governments of the region and resulted in effective and relevant cooperative initiatives, particularly in terms of transport and energy integration. Paradoxically, the enhancement of the coordinating role of the States, and its cooperation to reduce the infrastructure gap between South American countries, does not seem to have been accompanied by collective action (in addition to several statements of good intentions) to tackle trade imbalances and asymmetries in terms of production. In recent years, there was a deepening of trade liberalization in South America, as participants from different subregional treaties (within the regulatory environment of the LAIA) exchanged mutual concessions, which facilitated that large part of import demand generated by the resumption of growth in national domestic markets, since 2003, was 1 Professor and Head of the Political Economy and Economic History Department at State University of Campinas – UNICAMP - Brazil (www.eco.unicamp.br); former President of the Brazilian Society of Economic History (www.abphe.org.br). 283 captured by the intra-regional trade. The region's commercial integration seems to serve a broader geopolitical goal, to increase South-South cooperation for mutual strengthening in the face of international agendas controlled by developed countries (led by the United States) and perceived as threats to political autonomy and economic development. The goal of trade liberalization is also important in the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), which in addition to various economic and noneconomic objectives, aims to integrate and harmonize various subregional trade agreements, towards a single free trade area (not a customs union). On the other hand, no mechanism of effective control or reversal of trade imbalances was created in UNASUR, related or not to a planning of investments to complement supply chains on a regional scale. In this sense, the news about the emergence of a post-liberal model of regional integration seem exaggerated, if we look at trade relations in a context of strong asymmetry of competitiveness, and lack of focus on mechanisms that can contribute effectively to take care of the problem . The non-agenda of a political institution is sometimes as important as its agenda, to characterize it.2 The deepening of free trade agreements (without collective mechanisms for effective management of imbalances) in a region where several countries are ruled by governments to the left of the political center is somewhat surprising, especially given that the anti-liberal rhetoric was widely used to fight the FTAA, and that political and financial cooperation has, in fact, advanced to mitigate the heterogeneity of the infrastructure in South America. It is true that cooperation against disparities in infrastructure seems to be politically more consensual than mitigating uneven development and trade imbalances. After all, the financing of public works by the Brazilian state bank in charge for infrastructure projects in South America, the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES), passes through the financing of exports of Brazilian goods and services, so that there is an apparent harmony of strategic and business interests. On the order hand, the tolerance of Brazilian authorities in the face of Argentine protectionism, the nationalization of assets of Petrobrás (the Brazilian state oil giant) by Bolivia, Paraguayan request for revision of compensation for energy from Itaipu Binational (the joint venture in a big hydroelectric plant), or the Uruguayan regime to attracting automotive affiliates, is strongly rejected by the Brazilian business community. Despite the resistance of the Brazilian business community, it is important to note that trade imbalances in South America are not easily reversible, even if there was political consensus to reverse them, as they stem from structural productive asymmetries, i.e., the huge disparity of scale, productivity and diversification of economic sectors (industry, agriculture, services, and in some cases, mineral extraction) in Brazil vis-à-vis its regional partners (Panariello, 2007). In turn, Brazilian foreign direct investment (FDI) in other countries of South America sought natural resources, or followed exports in search of markets, being much larger than in the opposite direction - creating an increasing future flow of profits and dividends that will increase the Brazilian surplus in the region (HIRATUKA & SARTI, 2011). Despite higher rates of economic growth, Brazil´s regional partners have not been converging to the degree of development of the Brazilian industrial structure. They do not have sought that, anyway. In fact, several South American countries are integrated into the global economy through commodity exports and imports of manufactured goods, and have not been taking initiatives to restructure the specialization of their economic systems. For countries that adopted a neoliberal model at least since the 1990s, the problem didn´t even arise: uneven development is regarded as comparative advantage. In fact, countries (Chile, Peru and Colombia) that have negotiated bilateral agreements with the 2 For the concept of post-liberal regionalism, see Veiga, Pedro M. & RIOS, Sandra P. (2007). For the concept of non-agenda, see Bachrach & Baratz (1962). 284 United States gave more emphasis to preferential access to U.S. market than the preservation of policy space for developmental goals. If there are countries that adhered to neoliberalism in the 1990s, but executed a reversal to developmental policies with varying degrees of depth and scope in the next decade, these are Brazil and Argentina. They became very active in the World Trade Organization (WTO), and it was they who led the rejection of WTO-plus provisions (in the rules for government procurement, intellectual property, investment incentives, regulation of foreign capital, among others) that were required by the U.S. in the FTAA, while participating actively in the Doha Round of the WTO. A basic argument for rejecting the round of WTO- plus liberalization was the need to protect the policy space to enable the developing economies to aim a more diversified production structure, less vulnerable to the instability of commodity prices and external financing. In addition to meeting political pressures in search of better income distribution and growth of jobs and wages, the governing coalitions of these developmental states had the goal of expanding and diversifying industrial systems that have undergone a profound disruption during the implementation of neoliberal policies. The same cannot be said, however, of most of the countries that turned to the left in South America, adherents of resource nationalism, especially