Now its driver is not the common external barrier, but rather the geographic proximity and the complementarity of these economies— so it makes sense for companies to see the region, rather than a single country, as the “domestic market.” The integration effort is quite mature—there is a
common external tariff on most products; free intra-regional trade on all but one good
(sugar); customs legislation, regulation, registries, sanitary and phyto-sanitary protection;
coordinated technical norms; and regionally-negotiated block trade agreements with
several large parties.