THE RACE FOR PREFERENTIAL TRADE AGREEMENTS –CAUSES, PATTERNS AND EFFECTS

Agnes Ghibuţiu ()
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Agnes Ghibuţiu: Institute for World Economy of the Romanian Academy

Romanian Economic Business Review, 2015, vol. 10, issue 2, 9-28

Abstract: Over the last decade, members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have increasingly turned towards negotiating preferential trade agreements (PTAs) as a means for achieving improved market access for exports of goods and services, and investment. In particular, the year 2013 witnessed a remarkable revival of the regional trade agenda, with numerous new PTA negotiations being launched, including by WTO members accounting for substantial shares of world GDP and global trade and investmen – the so-called ”mega-PTAs”. While PTAs are not new to the WTO system, striking is however the fresh impetus to regionalism worldwide, which manifests itself not only in the steep numerical rise, but also the unprecedented pace and scale of new PTA initiatives. Against this backdrop, this paper addresses several key issues related to the new active phase of regionalism from the perspective of the multilateral trading system governed by the WTO. It first looks at the systemic factors underlying the unabated drive towards PTAs among WTO membership, and distils the rationale behind the current surge in regionalism. Second, it examines the patterns of new PTAs and evidences the qualitative differences vis-à-vis previous PTAs in terms of scope, composition and depth. Finally, it discusses the economic and geopolitical factors driving the new PTAs, and highlights some of the potential effects upon the world trading system and global trade patterns.

Keywords: preferential trade agreements (PTAs); trade policy; trade negotiations; world trading system; World Trade Organization (WTO); Doha Round (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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