![]() Over the last 30 years Latin American economies have, on average, gotten less diverse in terms of what they produce. The international exchanges aren’t particularly inclusive or sophisticated. ![]() And in Panama, Peru and Venezuela, trade as a percentage of the economy actually shrank during that period. Meanwhile, Colombia, Chile, Guatemala, Costa Rica and much of the Caribbean saw little change in trade’s economic importance. Still, few of these are in the region: Mexico and Paraguay made this jump, as did Argentina (but only because it started from such a low base). ![]() To be fair, only about two dozen nations around the world have truly opened up over the last 40 years, with trade to GDP doubling or more. Latin America and the Caribbean as a region is a full 11 percentage points below the global average (45% versus 56%) in terms of the importance of trade for their economies, and far from emerging market stars and commercial competitors where trade flows can rival overall GDP in size. Brazil and Argentina remain two of the most closed economies in the world, with trade amounting to less than 30% of GDP. Most of Latin America hasn’t really “globalized” or even internationalized. Latin America, unfortunately, has been one of the losers. Some countries and regions did better than others. Yet as trade, services, data, people and ideas internationalized, they didn’t do so uniformly or consistently. ![]() Globalization has been the watchword of the last 40 years, credited with boosting economic growth and bringing hundreds of millions out of poverty-while also charged with increasing inequality and destroying jobs and communities. ![]()
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