The Challenge of Implementing Preferential Trade Agreements in Developing Countries – Lessons for Rule Design

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Pierre Chauffour ◽  
David Kleimann
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Preferential Trade Agreements ◽  
Preferential Trade

The Law and Political Economy of International Trade Agreements

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Trebilcock
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
International Trade ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Comparative Advantage ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Preferential Trade Agreements ◽  
Preferential Trade ◽  
Multilateral Trade ◽  
Wide Range

While economists overwhelmingly favor free trade, even unilateral free trade, because of the gains realizable from specialization and the exploitation of comparative advantage, in fact international trading relations are structured by a complex body of multilateral and preferential trade agreements. The article outlines the case for multilateral trade agreements and the non-discrimination principle that they embody, in the form of both the Most Favored Nation principle and the National Treatment principle, where non-discrimination has been widely advocated as supporting both geopolitical goals (reducing economic factionalism) and economic goals (ensuring the full play of theories of comparative advantage undistorted by discriminatory trade treatment). Despite the virtues of multilateral trade agreements, preferential trade agreements (PTAs), authorized from the outset under GATT, have proliferated in recent years, even though they are inherently discriminatory between members and non-members, provoking vigorous debates as to whether (a) PTAs are trade-creating or trade-diverting; (b) whether they increase transaction costs in international trade; and (c) whether they undermine the future course of multilateral trade liberalization. A further and similarly contentious derogation from the principle of non-discrimination under the multilateral system is Special and Differential Treatment for developing countries, where since the mid-1950s developing countries have been given much greater latitude than developed countries to engage in trade protectionism on the import side in order to promote infant industries, and since the mid-1960s on the export side have benefited from non-reciprocal trade concessions by developed countries on products of actual or potential export interest to developing countries. Beyond debates over the strengths and weaknesses of multilateral trade agreements and the two major derogations therefrom, further debates surround the appropriate scope of trade agreements, and in particular the expansion of their scope in recent decades to address divergences or incompatibilities across a wide range of domestic regulatory and related policies that arguably create frictions in cross-border trade and investment and hence constitute an impediment to it. The article goes on to consider contemporary fair trade versus free trade debates, including concerns over trade deficits, currency manipulation, export subsidies, misappropriation of intellectual property rights, and lax labor or environmental standards. The article concludes with a consideration of the case for a larger scope for plurilateral trade agreements internationally, and for a larger scope for active labor market policies domestically to mitigate transition costs from trade.

PROVISIONS ON ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION IN PREFERENTIAL TRADE AGREEMENTS: PROBLEMS OF ECONOMIC EFFECT AND ENVIRONMENTAL EFFICIENCY

2021 ◽  
pp. 81-93
Author(s):  
D.V. Krasikov
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Economic Effect ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Preferential Trade Agreements ◽  
Environmental Efficiency ◽  
Traditional Practice ◽  
Preferential Trade

The inclusion of provisions on various aspects of environmental protection into multilateral and bilateral preferential trade agreements has become a traditional practice for most developed and developing countries. The present paper provides an overview of a number of foreign studies on specific problems of economic effect and environmental efficiency of the respective provisions.

Subsidies Regulation Beyond the WTO

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonardo Borlini
Keyword(s):  
Trade Policy ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Preferential Trade Agreements ◽  
Preferential Trade ◽  
Bilateral Agreements ◽  
Negative Function ◽  
Public Aid ◽  
The Eu

An increasingly important aspect of EU trade policy since the lifting of its self-imposed moratorium on preferential trade agreements (PTAs) has been the inclusion of WTO+ provisions on subsidies in bilateral agreements negotiated with a number of third countries. This article covers the main bilateral PTAs negotiated after the publication of the Commission’s Communication on ‘Global Europe’ in order to explore the implications of the different subsidy disciplines they set out. It also discusses the questions that arise when examining the legal discipline of public aid provided by such agreements, regarding not only the substantive appropriateness of standards and rules on compatibility, but also the procedural mechanisms designed to guarantee the implementation and the enforcement of such rules. It concludes that the most advanced among the EU PTAs are shaped as competition regulation and go beyond a mere negative function, ensuring that subsidies can contribute to fundamental public goals.

Preferential Trade Agreements as Stumbling Blocks for Multilateral Trade Liberalization: Evidence for the United States

2006 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 896-914 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuno Limão
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Trade Liberalization ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
The United States ◽  
Preferential Trade Agreements ◽  
Detailed Data ◽  
Preferential Trade ◽  
Multilateral Trade ◽  
Multilateral Trade Liberalization ◽  
Tariff Reductions

Most countries are members of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). The effect of these agreements has attracted much interest and raised the question of whether PTAs promote or slow multilateral trade liberalization, i.e., whether they are a “building block” or “stumbling block” to multilateral liberalization. Despite this long-standing concern with PTAs and the lack of theoretical consensus, there is no systematic evidence on whether they are actually a stumbling block to multilateral liberalization. We use detailed data on U.S. multilateral tariffs to provide the first systematic evidence that the direct effect of PTAs was to generate a stumbling block to its MTL. We also provide evidence of reciprocity in multilateral tariff reductions.

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