Is the pacific alliance an effective trade integration strategy to get a foothold in Latin America and strengthen its position in the Asia-Pacific market? A vision from Peru

Abstract

This paper analyzes the impact that Peruvian agricultural exports have had on its trade agreements with Canada, Chile, China, Korea, the United States, Japan, Mexico Singapore and Thailand. Agricultural exports were selected as being representative of Peru’s nontraditional exports. Over the past few years, this sector’s competitiveness has seen a major development, generating great potential to position itself within the Asia-Pacific region and regional and global value chains. Based on ex-post economic assessments of free trade agreements, our analysis shows the behavior and composition of these agricultural exports to identify if their performance in Asia-Pacific markets is a result of the use of key provisions of the trade agreements regarding market access, rules of origin, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, commercial agreements’ technical barriers to trade and health protocols. This enables us to estimate the opportunities offered by the provisions of the Pacific Alliance.