If a monetary treaty can be negotiated, it could be attractive for Latin America. Economists and government officials say the nations that would be most tempted to follow Ecuador's example are those of Central America, which already conduct the bulk of their trade with the United States. In El Salvador, for instance, dollar remittances from Salvadorans in the United States are now the principal source of foreign exchange. In reality, many Latin American nations already rely on dollars, to one degree or another. At the checkout counters of many supermarkets in Peru, for example, the bills given to shoppers are calculated both in dollars and Peruvian soles.
Customers pay in either currency.
But dollars are already commonly exchanged for sucres on the streets of Quito. Other Latin American countries, most notably Argentina, have formally adopted mechanisms that tie the exchange rate of their pesos to the dollar and have made the two currencies fully convertible at that fixed rate. And beyond Latin America, Liberia in Africa and a few tiny island nations in the Pacific have embraced dollarization, while Hong Kong has followed an approach similar to that of Argentina and its currency board since 1983. Indeed, the consistent popularity of the currency in world markets has meant that most United States dollars can be found in other countries. In a country like Argentina, a lot of the costs of dollarization have already been incurred, so the step to full dollarization would not be that great.