The Latin America’s choice in the last decades to export primary products instead of developing its industries has combined with privatizations of public services and the general reduction of the state within a broader context of international competition to result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, the collapse of public health systems, a pervasive lack of personal protective equipment and weak political coordination to combat the virus.

The article "‘Free trade’ agreements and the pandemic" shows how 25 years of FTAs in Latin America have constrained the capacity of states to respond to this current health emergency. It is the third of a series of four articles by Public Services International (PSI) in association with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) that investigate how free trade agreements, neoliberalism, and the lack of tax fairness in Latin America have undermined the health and socioeconomic development strategies in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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The first article, "Pandemic: Big Business for Transnational Corporations", was launched on August 5th. That article explained how clauses contained in free trade agreements, known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms, can allow large transnational companies to take legal action against governments’ emergency responses to the pandemic.

The second article, "Facing the Pandemic in Latin America: An analysis of vulnerabilities after 30 years of neoliberalism" analyzes the arguments and perspectives that led to depleted health and other public services in the region over the past few decades.