Asian countries, those from Southeast and Northeast Asia, are discussing how to move toward free trade. Australia and New Zealand have free trade with each other. The foregoing listing is by no means complete. My point, nevertheless, should be clear. Countries all over the world are negotiating preferential trade arrangements regionally, subregionally, cross-regionally.
Efforts are simultaneously under way to revive global, nonpreferential trade negotiations.
The EU is enlarging beyond the current 15 to include former socialist countries of Eastern Europe. So, too, will Russia and many of the other states of the former Soviet Union. It is outside all the main trade initiatives going on in the world, except in the most tenuous way with the Association of Caribbean States. This isolation is not completely Cuba's fault. After all, the United States does maintain an embargo against most trade with Cuba.