The coming into force of "free trade agreements" across the Western Hemisphere since the late 1980s has been a historic change that is still in the process of development. This essay seeks to explain this development. To do so, it investigates examples of the historical development of social relations in the hemisphere. The political will to carry out such a plan can be found in each country in the social base that sees benefit in the course. While this political will exists, everywhere the process has been a contested one, both domestically and internationally. This policy will continue to find support especially from large capital interests and their representatives who will continue to find their opposition in a wide variety of labour and social movements and socialist tendencies. The balance determines the type of contract struck.

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After promoting in the 1970s a more egalitarian international trade system, developing countries abandoned the prospects of finding an alternative route to their development and have massively participated in the Uruguay Round. Results have been disappointing, and developing countries, particularly in the Latin American-Caribbean (LAC) region, are now also pursuing economic integration at the regional level. The 1990s have in fact been characterised by the general revival of regionalism, a trend considered by many legal scholars and economists as dangerous for multilateralism. The debate is ongoing, and the WTO is currently attempting to better monitor the impacts of regionalism. In any case, regional integration agreements (RIAs) are now present in all parts of the world, and developing countries seem to consider that such arrangements offer promising opportunities than lack in multilateral agreements. More particularly, LAC countries are now pursuing economic integration at the bilateral, subregional, regional and even hemispheric level with the current negotiations for a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). But the creation of a FTAA faces many obstacles, caused by wide disparities in the level of economic development within the region and the incredible variety of existing RIAs throughout the Hemisphere. And it remains to be seen if equity and social concerns will be better reflected in a regional agreement than at the multilateral level.

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