Trading up.

Although practically every nation in Latin America has signed bilateral free trade agreements with one or more countries in the region, the accords are not consistent and would therefore have to be renegotiated to fit unified FTAA standards. A more feasible solution, most analysts say, is to link the region's top five trade pacts--NAFTA, Mercosur, the Andean Pact, the Central American Common Market and Caricom. A likely scenario would have the Andean Pact and Mercosur form a trade pact, while CACM and Caricom join NAFTA. The two mega-blocs would then in turn negotiate a free trade agreement. "When you look at FTAA, it really boils down to NAFTA and Mercosur," then-U.S. Commerce Undersecretary David Rothkopf told a gathering of business leaders in Miami last December. "If you can't reconcile differences between those two markets then it's all in vain."