Regional trade agreements
Regional Trade Agreements and the Multilateral Trading System
This volume contains a collection of studies examining trade-related issues negotiated in regional trade agreements (RTAs) and how RTAs are related to the WTO's rules. While previous work has focused on subsets of RTAs these studies are based on what is probably the largest dataset used to date and highlight key issues that have been negotiated in all RTAs notified to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). New rules within RTAs are compared to rules agreed upon by WTO members. The extent of their divergences and the potential implications for parties to RTAs as well as for WTO members that are not parties to RTAs are examined. This volume makes an important contribution to the current debate on the role of the WTO in regulating international trade and how WTO rules relate to new rules being developed by RTAs.
World Tariff Profiles 2013
World Tariff Profiles 2013 — a joint publication of the WTO the International Trade Centre (ITC) and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) — provides comprehensive tariff information on all WTO members and a number of other countries where data is available. It is the only compilation of tariff information of its kind available to researchers and negotiators. The publication summarizes the market access that each country offers to imports as well as the market access conditions faced by its products in its major export markets. The profiles show both the maximum tariff rates that are legally “bound” in the WTO and the rates that countries actually apply. The technical annex in this year’s issue focuses on WTO members’ participation in regional trade agreements (RTAs) with complementary data provided on tariff elimination in RTAs notified under the WTO’s Transparency Mechanism.
Regional Rules on the Global Trading System
The proliferation of regional trade agreements (RTAs) over the past two decades has highlighted the need to look closely at the potential conflicts between regional and WTO rules or disciplines. A major obstacle to advancing understanding of RTAs is the absence of detailed information about their contents. This has limited the debate between those who view RTAs as discriminatory instruments hostage to protectionist interests and those who see them as conducive to multilateral trade opening. This book provides detailed analysis of RTA rules in six key areas - market access technical barriers to trade contingent protection investment services and competition policy - across dozens of the main RTAs in the world. The analysis helps to provide new insights into the interplay between regional and multilateral trade rules advances understanding of the economic effects of RTAs and contributes to the discussion on how to deal with the burgeoning number of RTAs.
The promise of TradeTech
TradeTech – the set of technologies that enables global trade to become more efficient inclusive and sustainable – is multifaceted from trade facilitation to efficiency gains and reduced costs to greater transparency and resilience of supply chains. Although technological innovation exists the major challenge to the global adoption of TradeTech will be building international policy coordination. Trade agreements can play a key role. Despite ongoing efforts to introduce digital trade provisions in trade agreements many unseized opportunities and unexplored policies remain. This joint World Economic Forum and WTO publication explores how trade agreements could be leveraged to advance the adoption of digital technologies and trade digitalization.
Les promesses des technologies au service du commerce
Les promesses des technologies au service du commerce – l'ensemble de technologies grâce auxquelles le commerce mondial peut devenir plus efficace plus inclusif et plus durable – sont nombreuses depuis la facilitation des échanges jusqu'aux gains d'efficacité et à la réduction des coûts en passant par l'amélioration de la transparence et de la résilience des chaînes d'approvisionnement. Certes l'innovation technologique existe mais le plus grand défi en ce qui concerne l'adoption des technologies au service du commerce à l'échelle mondiale consistera à mettre en place une coordination internationale des politiques. Les accords commerciaux peuvent jouer un rôle primordial. En dépit des efforts actuels en vue d'introduire des dispositions relatives au commerce numérique il subsiste nombre de possibilités inexploitées et de politiques inexplorées. Cette publication conjointe du Forum économique mondial et de l'OMC examine de quelle façon les accords commerciaux pourraient être mobilisés pour faire progresser l'adoption des technologies numériques et la numérisation du commerce.
La promesa de la tecnología comercial
La tecnología comercial —el conjunto de tecnologías que permiten que el comercio mundial sea cada vez más eficiente inclusivo y sostenible— abarca múltiples aspectos desde la facilitación del comercio hasta el aumento de la eficiencia y la reducción de los costos así como la mayor transparencia y resiliencia de las cadenas de suministro. Aunque la innovación tecnológica existe el principal desafío que afronta la adopción mundial de la tecnología comercial será instaurar mecanismos para coordinar las políticas en el plano internacional. Y ahí es donde los acuerdos comerciales pueden desempeñar un papel fundamental. A pesar de los esfuerzos que se están realizando para introducir disposiciones sobre comercio digital en los acuerdos comerciales sigue habiendo muchas oportunidades desaprovechadas y políticas no exploradas. En esta publicación conjunta del Foro Económico Mundial y de la OMC se analiza la forma en que podrían aprovecharse los acuerdos comerciales para impulsar la adopción de tecnologías digitales y la digitalización del comercio.
Mapping of dispute settlement mechanisms in regional trade agreements – innovative or variations on a theme?
Regional trade agreements (RTAs) have become an indelible feature of the international trading landscape. The number of RTAs has not only increased exponentially over the years but their content has also evolved over time. In particular RTAs have become quite expansive in their regulatory coverage moving from the reduction of tariffs to behind- the border issues such as the harmonization of standards and further to so- called “WTO- extra” (WTO- X) issues such as competition and investment. Moreover the enforcement mechanisms established by RTAs have increasingly shifted from politically oriented procedures to more sophisticated legalistic forms of dispute settlement.
Some conclusions
Regional trade agreements and the multilateral trading system are not inherently incompatible approaches to trade liberalization. This is a fact acknowledged by the GATT and WTO rule books which permit the formation of RTAs. The conditions placed on RTAs through GATT and WTO rules are meant to ensure that they are not more discriminatory than necessary (as defined by the rules) and do not create additional barriers to trade for third parties.
Big-Think Regionalism: A critical survey
In the late 1940s and 1950s the profession’s best and brightest minds were focused on regionalism: Jacob Viner James Meade Richard Lipsey Harry Johnson and Max Cordon inter alia. The reason was simple. Europe’s post-war architecture was one of the world’s greatest problems and a free trade area was to be part of it economists were muddled over the issue. The thinking of the 1950s straightened out the economics and established the intellectual paradigm that dominated the regionalism literature right up to 1991.1 The paradigm was framed around the Vinerian question: ‘Would a nation gain from joining various preferential trade configurations?’ This literature – what could be called Small-Think Regionalism – ignored systemic implications since the only large preferential arrangement – the EEC – was viewed as sui generis.
Services liberalization in the new generation of preferential trade agreements: How much further than the GATS?
In the context of stalled multilateral trade negotiations preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have continued to proliferate raising important trade and policy issues. Unlike in any other period since the establishment of the multilateral trading system all important trading nations are now involved in PTA discussions of one form or another. In the midst of the recent flurry of PTA activity this paper attempts to fill a gap in the literature by providing a comprehensive evaluation of the liberalization commitments contained in the recent wave of preferential trade agreements on services. Indeed the trade literature has tended to limit its examination of services components of PTAs to the type of rules they contain and to such other characteristics as whether a GATStype positive listing or NAFTA-type negative listing was used in undertaking commitments.
A mapping of regional rules on technical barriers to trade
The progressive elimination of tariff barriers has shifted the attention to other forms of barriers to trade. In particular the recent debate on market access issues highlighted technical barriers to trade (TBTs). These consist of standards technical regulations and conformity assessment procedures. Standards and technical regulations specify the technical characteristics of a product or the conditions under which it is made. Product standards define the requirements of the characteristics of products (such as the level of safety of an electronic device) while production standards are the conditions under which a product must be made (such as the requirement of limited gas emissions). Conformity assessment procedures define the testing procedures necessary to assess the conformity of products to the norms.
Trade facilitation under the regional trade agreement umbrella: Origins and evolution
The proliferation of regional trade agreements (RTAs) over the past few decades has sparked intense debate on their purpose structure and impact. Trade facilitation (TF) aspects did not figure too prominently in these discussions and have only recently attracted more attention. For many years they merely played a marginal role both in the agreements themselves and in the related analysis.