Even in Paraguay they no longer close the door to a trade agreement with China, as long as it is done en bloc and does not imply political conditions, for example, that Asunción assume the "one China" policy and cut ties with Taiwan. In regulatory terms, allowing each country to individually negotiate free trade agreements – as the government of Uruguay and a sector of the Bolsonaro government are postulating today – means violating the founding treaty of Mercosur, whose ultimate goal is to achieve a common market and definitively end the customs union.
In economic terms, this would south africa phone number list have direct effects on some productive sectors, especially Argentines and Brazilians, which would be forced to compete with Chinese products that would enter indirectly without paying any type of tariff. An identity in crisis Mercosur's problems, however, are not limited to trade tensions. The crisis is, in reality, much deeper: what is in question is the very identity of the bloc. Not for nothing in recent years other points of controversy have accumulated, such as the position towards the Venezuelan crisis and, more recently, the difficulties in coordinating actions against the covid-19 pandemic.
In the 1980s, the agreement's gestation period, the unifying meaning of integration was to build a friendly relationship between Argentina and Brazil, to strengthen democracies and to foster economic interdependence. In the 1990s, the identity of Mercosur was built on the objective of inserting itself into globalization and the consolidation of neoliberal economic reforms. In the 2000s, during the heyday of center-left governments, the bloc redefined itself in terms of autonomy and expanded its agendas and institutional structure beyond the economic-commercial sphere.