The summit of the Americas hosted by President Clinton in December 1994 has given strong impetus to Western Hemisphere economic integration. This is the first comprehensive analysis of the economics and politics of a Western Hemisphere Free Trade Agreement. It has attracted considerable attention in business and policy circles throughout the hemisphere and is widely credited with having influenced the decision of the hemispheric heads of state to seek a free trade agreement by 2005. The US "sherpa" for the Summit, Assistant Secretary of State Alexander Watson, has described the book as the blueprint for US policy.The authors recommend that the NAFTA be extended to includeall of the countries in the region when and as they undertakethe economic and political reforms necessary to join. Theydevelop a set of readiness indicators to assess each country'spreparedness to join the NAFTA. The study approaches the subject from four perspectives: what trade issues the negotiations should cover;how the negotiations might be formally structured; whatimplications an agreement might hold for the multilateral trading system; and what the hemispheric agreement could mean for relations among Latin American countries and between them and countries inEurope and Asia.