Latin America this month will have hosted two key summits. One is the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, and the other is the Group of 20. Both are products of the heyday of globalization in the late 1980s and 1990s.
Those were the days when negotiators envisioned ever-lower trade barriers, boosting productivity and living standards for all. APEC was supposed to foster trade and common prosperity across the Pacific Rim, while the G-20 was created to manage financial risks from increased capital-market linkages. There also was another project of the era, though it never took off: the Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA.
