Scholars of Latin America's economic trajectory claim that higher domestic transportation costs stand as a significant barrier to trade and economic integration, and are primarily related to the region's inadequate transportation infrastructure. However, calls for infrastructure investment have not been preceded with the multi-scalar trade and transportation analyses necessary to fully investigate Latin American trade impedance. Although these steps have been broached by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the present research is born of a unique conceptual approach and employs a dataset developed through an innovative verification process, addressing legacy data constraints in the field. Upon this foundation, this research establishes the existence, extent, location, and spatial distribution of trade impedance throughout South America. The vast majority of U.S.-bound export trade flows are found to have trade impedance proportionate to distance; for the total dataset and all segments, the share of flows by volume with disproportionately high expected distance (trade impedance) ranges from 1.3% to 11.2%. Global spatial autocorrelation analysis reveals that mean and median trade impedance ratios at origins are spatially clustered for the total dataset, but randomly distributed for all commodity-based segments. Mean and median trade impedance ratios at destinations are randomly distributed for the total dataset and all segments. Local spatial autocorrelation analysis reveals high trade impedance ratio mean and median clusters and outliers at origins and destinations, which vary by commodity segment.