Critical Mass Agreements: The Proven Template for Trade Liberalization in the WTO

Gary Winslett

World Trade Review, 2018, vol. 17, issue 3, 405-426

Abstract: The expansion of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) in 2015 was the most successful attempt at trade liberalization under the auspices of the WTO since its inception in 1995. Its success makes it a template for other trade liberalization efforts. In this article, I explain how the ITA expansion came to pass and explicate the contours of the template it provides. I highlight four factors that were crucial to the ITA expansion's successful completion: a narrower scope without a single undertaking approach, a negotiating group that contained many but not all WTO members, a focus on tariffs rather than non-tariff barriers, and avoiding a nationalistic opposition. I conclude by discussing what lessons these factors and the ITA expansion suggest for other ongoing trade negotiations such as the Environmental Goods Agreements (EGA).

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:wotrrv:v:17:y:2018:i:03:p:405-426_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in World Trade Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().