Contemporary Issues Driving the Initiation and Conclusion of Mega Regional Trade Agreements (original) (raw)
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Critical Debates in Social Sciences, 2018
Mega-regional trade agreements (MRTAs), namely Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), Transpacific Partnership (TPP) and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), are new generation trade agreements that could, when and if realised, create the world’s most important trading blocs. After the Doha Round collapsed, in order to get past the deadlock at the WTO and achieve more trade liberalisation, countries started to focus on bilateral trade agreements with deeper and more comprehensive provisions than the WTO’s multilateral rules. A mixture of global commercial ambitions, geopolitical concerns and pressures from certain subnational actors motivated the biggest trading countries to negotiate mega-regional trade agreements. MRTA negotiations were launched with great expectations. Yet because of the developments like Donald Trump’s election and rise of anti-free trade movements in various parts of Europe, TTIP negotiations effectively stopped and TPP lost the US leadership. RCEP negotiations, on the other hand, have been going slowly due to the complexity of South East Asian politics. This chapter aims to explore whether MRTAs are still relevant policy tools by examining the drivers for MRTAs and the impediments against them, as well as the regional and global trade politics behind them. To that end, a two-tier analysis will be presented. The first tier is the drivers and impediments stemming from the non-state actors. The second is the trade politics at the international level (state actors). Most of the drivers are still at play today yet it is hard to foresee how lasting some of the impediments will be. This chapter argues that despite these impediments, MRTAs will continue to be relevant. Because drivers weigh more in terms of national interests and countries have a lot to gain from such arrangements. Also, these agreements represent a new level that liberalisation and cooperation efforts on trade reached. Even if they do not come into life, they will serve as sources of content for the future commercial deals. For reference: Ali KINCAL and Utku UTKULU, 'The Political Economy of the Mega-Regional Trade Agreements and the Future of the Global Trading System', in Bedriye TUNÇSİPER and Ferhan SAYIN (eds), Critical Debates in Social Sciences, pp. 305-326.
Mega-Regional Trade Agreements
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2017
This chapter examines the extent to which mega-regional agreements constitute new orientations for EU external relations. It focuses on CETA, TTIP, and TiSA, which are the most important instruments in the context of mega-regional initiatives from the viewpoint of the EU, placing them, however, in the broader context of other mega-regional initiatives such as TPP and the RCEP. This chapter explains the main motivations underlying the worldwide move to regional agreements in the course of the last ten to fifteen years and expounds the main functions of mega-regional agreements. Furthermore, it sketches out the principal (geo-)political implications of today’s prime mega-regional projects. Finally, this introductory chapter argues that the reorientation attempted with these initiatives calls for a re-evaluation in view of the problematic experiences made during the negotiations on CETA and TTIP, in particular.
EMC Review - Časopis za ekonomiju - APEIRON, 2017
Th e aim of this study is to investigate the motives and eff ects of mega-regional trade agreements on the multilateral trading system using the example of Trans Pacifi c Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Multilateralism and regionalism, although opposite trends, coexist simultaneously. While many arguments can be given for both approaches one has to recognize that the number of regional trade agreements is increasing and that regionalism is becoming a prevailing trend. Th e response to the regional trade agreements, especially mega-regionals, will mostly depend upon the eff ect on the third countries' trade interests. Since it is expected that, over time, many of the currently excluded emerging economies will become a part of some mega-regional agreement, it is not likely that new global standards and rules will be created on a strictly regional but rather on multilateral level.
Global Trade Governance and G20: A Response to Mega-Regional Trade Agreements
2016
Regional trade agreements (RTAs) proliferate as the WTO loses its centricity. Moreover, mega-deals like TTP, TTIP and RCEP initiated among larger economies become discernable in trade governance. Despite an essential role the RTAs can play in liberalising trade and developing trade rules, it is proposed in all G20 documents that they need to ensure their consistentency with the multilateral trading system, and that they must be open and inclusive. Terms like consistency or inclusiveness can be vague. G20 is an important platform to develop tangible and meaningful deliverables to bring complementarity of the RTAs with the WTO. The article briefly discusses what should be the responses to mega-regionals, and how their challenges could be minimised to provide an accord, under the G20 platform. The article recalls that the issue was profoundly relevant to China and Turkey, two preceeding Presidents of G20.
Rising Regionalization: An Assessment of Regional Trade Agreements
Avrasya Etüdleri, 2024
In parallel with the structural change in world trade, Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) are becoming more prominent and gaining increasing importance. The proliferation of these agreements fills the gap left by multilateral trade negotiations, their scope of influence is expanding beyond reducing trade tariffs. Since the mid-20th century, multilateral trade negotiations have been used to liberalize the global trade, and the Bretton Woods institutions have accelerated this process. Along with multilateral initiatives, countries have also tended to liberalize trade among themselves through bilateral, regional, or interregional formations. Especially in the last three decades, Asia's rapidly expanding role in the world economy and its growing weight in global production and supply chains, coupled with the slowing economic power of developed countries, rising protectionism, and global uncertainties, have shown signs of a significant transformation in the international trade system. The breakdown of the Doha Round process in the face of rapid and structural change in the world economy, the failure of the WTO to realize the expected reforms and improvements, and the effects of the global financial crisis have led member countries to turn to RTAs instead of multilateral negotiations. This interest has increased even more and shifted towards new RTAs, in a sense, mega-regional agreements. This study examines the transformation of multilateral trade negotiations within the liberal trade system and argues that the emergence of new regionalism in this process, and hence the RTA, has promoted globalization through trade liberalization. In this context, it addresses the dynamics of RTAs, which are an essential part of the global trade system and have proven to have trade-creating potential. It argues that they will continue to be preferred by countries to broaden and deepen their trade policies in the coming years.
Competition and Change, 2017
Mega-regional trade agreements imply several challenges for developing countries. Some are due to the impacts of economic growth within areas of new discriminatory preferential access, while others are produced by the long-term implications of mega-regional trade agreements on global trade governance. These challenges are likely to increase as more mega-regional trade agreements with large economic size, regulatory ambition and geo-strategic significance are negotiated and signed. The implications of these challenges are significant for developing countries outside the mega-regional trade agreements, particularly the least-developed countries. This paper examines some of the major challenges from mega-regional trade agreements for non-participating developing countries, with attention to the drivers of these agreements, their economic impacts, the difficulties encountered by the World Trade Organization following emergence of mega-regional trade agreements, and possible strategic responses to these trade agreements. Underlining the differential impacts of mega-regional trade agreements on non-participating developing countries, the paper concludes that larger economies like China and India are likely to be less affected due to their economic size and strategic influence, compared with the least developed countries.
Could Regional Trade Integration be a Building Block for Global Governance of Trade?
Some theories consider the possibility to multilateralize regional approaches and to establish global system of rules based on regionalism. These tendencies are also tailored on international trade. Nevertheless, the fundamental problem of the multilateral trading system in the framework of the World Trade Organization is the extent of policy space, which states´ governments do not want to give in favor of global trade governance. Although the multilateral trading system and further multilateral trade liberalization face many challenges, regionalism is not an alternative that could help government to pursue their trade interests. On the contrary, bilateral Preferential Trade Agreements harm competition, distort business environment and undermine the multilateral trading system.
Impetus for the initiation and conclusion of mega-regional agreements
REGIONAL INTEGRATION LAW, 2019
This paper explores the impetus for the initiation and conclusion of mega-regional agreements specifically the African Free Trade Agreement, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement and the Transatlantic Partnership Agreement.
Regional Trade Agreements: A Strike at Multilateralism
The Doha Round of negotiations of the World Trade Organization has become a major battleground between developed and developing countries. Begun in 2001, the Doha negotiations have yet to be concluded, leading to widespread frustration on its sluggish pace. Meanwhile, new Regional Trade Agreements have been launched, begging the question: Has trade governance reached a critical junction, with one path leading to the strengthening of the multilateral principles of global trade, and the other, to the abandoning of these principles and the evolution of a different constitution for 21st-century multilateralism? This paper reviews literature and legal text to deduce answers to these questions. It analyses the relationship between the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), and trade multilateralism. This paper finds that RTAs can be seen as a strike at multilateralism and this, in turn, can be regarded as either a negative or positive direction, depending on what principles and objectives are held as the legitimate building blocks of trade multilateralism.