The World Trade Organization or WTO and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation or APEC share a common goal of fostering an open multilateral trade regime (National Policy Foundation 2001). But their differences in institutional structures prevent them from forming a closer tie in producing valuable economic gains. Both organizations are burdened by internal strife between the developing and developed nations and the Newly Industrializing Countries in between the groups. Enlarged memberships, made worse by an increasingly complex and diverge global economic system, have gone beyond the capability of the WTO and APEC original institutional designs. The institutional crisis they face has brought their accountability, credibility and reliability into question.

             Many South Americans considered the Mercado Comun del Sur or MERCOSUR a useful bulwark against the encroachment of the US in the region in the form of the Free Trade Area of the Americas or FTAA or bilateral treaties (Wikipedia 2005). It was a trading zone among Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. But the collapse of the Argentine economy in 2002 significantly weakened MERCOSUR and many believed that the Bush administration refused to bail Argentina out because the US saw MERCOSUR as a threat to its divide-and-conquer strategy to dominate the Latin America economies. In December 2004, MERCOSUR merged with the Andean Community trade bloc or CAN and formed the South American Community of Nations, patterned after the European Union or EU. An analysis of the dynamic adjustments in both regions' commodity and capital markets after trade liberation showed that tariff reductions initiated by MERCOSUR had small positive effects on US production, trade, consumption and investment (Diao and Somwaru 1996). These tariff reductions stimulated MERCOSUR's growth and improved its current account.

             Following its accession to membership in the WTO in 1999, China decided to use free trade agreements as a policy too.