Uruguay’s Trade Policy and Specialisation over Two Decades: a Gradual and Permanent Path to Trade Openness

This paper analyses the process of trade liberalization in Uruguay, for both goods and services, over a period of more than two decades (1990-2013). This process was a mix of unilateral liberalization strategies as well as reciprocal trade agreements, where MERCOSUR played an important role. This document examine such a role, finding that even when regional integration contributed to increase competition on importing goods, this opening was associated with a contractive adjustment in many manufacturing sectors where opportunities arising from expansion were outweigh by the imperfection of the integration process and by a large number of non-tariff barriers. The access to international markets is an important problem for Uruguay in the near future. As the process of preferential trade liberalization continues and Uruguay remains out of this agenda, it will lose not only absolute but also relative market access. This document also analyses Uruguay´s specialization pattern, finding a deepening in the traditional composition of it exports basket, with a strong presence of products which make intense use of natural resources, but also with an important diversification within this category. An expansion in services was also found, especially from more traditional sectors to global services. Finally, this paper focused on identifying the impact of changes in specialization patterns on labor market. An important finding here is that an increasing proportion of labor depends directly or indirectly on external demand. In addition to this, there has been an increase in the levels of qualifications required per unit of gross production value, which when combined with the growth in exports has led to a greater proportion of labor depending on exports.