Regional Integration in Africa, Asia and Latin America

Regional integration is not only a European project. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, founded in 1967, created the ASEAN Free Trade Area in 1992 and later the ASEAN Economic Community, helping the region become a hub of manufacturing supply chains. In South America, Mercosur, founded in 1991 by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, built a customs union, though it has struggled with crises and disagreements among members.

The African Continental Free Trade Area, agreed in 2018 with trading starting in 2021, aims to link most of Africa's countries into one market. Africa's challenge is that only a small share of its trade, roughly 15 percent, is with other African countries, partly because colonial-era infrastructure linked mines and farms to ports rather than to neighbors. Supporters hope larger markets will attract investment and industry; skeptics point to poor roads, slow border procedures and overlapping regional blocs as obstacles that tariff cuts alone cannot fix.