Acordo de Livre Comércio com a UE: a vulnerabilidade dos produtos industriais produzidos pelo Mercosul à competição européia [Free Trade Agreement - EU and Mercosur: vulnerability of Mercosur products to European competition]

Abstract

The UE and Mercosur are currently negotiating a free trade agreement. The offer made by Mercosur reflects its production and protection structure and is more "generous" to agriculture than to industry. In fact, the main competitive fragilities of Mercosur are concentrated in manufactured goods while European competitive fragilities are concentrated in the agriculture sector. As the UE has an important market share in the Mercosur countries, it poses a major threat to the domestic producers. Our paper seeks to identify, at a disaggregated level, the Mercosur manufactured goods for which the growth of the European manufacture exports can represent a threat. We consider that trade growth depends on the existence of complementarity between the two regions and the existence of a margin for liberalization in the destination market, and that the greater the trade among Mercosur countries the greater the threat from European goods to local produces.free trade agreement, manufactured goods, Mercosur, European Union