Trade and investment rules: Latin American perspectives

This paper depicts the changing international landscape of investment rule-making from a Latin American perspective. It does so by looking first at the recent evolution of investment rules, pointing out differences and synergies between these closely intertwined processes and the role that Latin American countries have had in shaping them. Against the backdrop of repeated failures to develop a comprehensive set of investment disciplines at the multilateral level, the paper reviews the main arguments that have been recently advanced in favour of and against global rules for investment. The paper dissects the main reasons why investment fell off the negotiating agenda of the Doha Development Agenda of the World Trade Organization (WTO). It concludes with a number of policy lessons regarding the most optimal institutional settings in which to pursue various elements of investment rule-making and sketches a few forward-looking scenarios on investment rule-making at the multilateral level.