Disaggregating the Regional-Multilateral Overlap: The NAFTA Looking-Glass (original) (raw)
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From NAFTA to USMCA: Providing Context for a New Era of Regional Investor-State Dispute Settlement
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2019
nafta ("Despite what opponents of trade liberalization such as Pat Buchanan contend, the North American Free Trade Agreement has been a success by any measure. Trade among the United States, Canada, and Mexico has flourished since the passage of NAFTA, benefiting American consumers and exporters. Since 1993, two-way trade with our NAFTA partners has increased by 44 percent, to $421 billion in 1996. That compares with a 33 percent increase in American trade with all other countries. Mexico has now become America's second largest market for exports, just ahead of Japan and behind only Canada.").
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.
With the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, the pyramidal design of the international trading system placed multilateralism at the top of the pyramid, regionalism/bilateralism in the middle, and the domestic trade and economic policies of WTO Member States at the bottom of the pyramid. This article questions whether this vertical structure is still the case today, given the tremendous proliferation of regional trade agreements (RTAs) in recent years and the fact that the WTO is losing its centrality in the international trading system. The thesis of this article is that the multilateral trading system's single undertaking is no longer feasible, hence affirming RTA proliferation as the modus operandi for trade liberalization. This article also argues that RTA proliferation implies the erosion of the WTO law principle of non-discrimination, which endangers the multilateral trading system. RTAs can help countries integrate into the multilateral trading system, but are also a fundamental departure from the principle of non-discrimination. This raises the question of whether RTAs are a building block for further multilateral liberalization or a stumbling block.
NAFTA in a Comparative Perspective: A Debate on Trade Diplomacy, Economic Policy, and Regionalism
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics
American economist Sidney Weintraub to summarize the fundamentals under which NAFTA was built and understood, at least in mainstream analysis: the economic complementarities existing among the three countries of North America could work to the benefit of everyone involved if economic integration is well managed and geared toward the improvement of regional competitiveness. Thus, NAFTA became the privileged tool under which managed integration became implemented and assessed, at least in three major domains: as a foreign policy tool to advance the interests of each nation, as an economic device to reap the benefits of integration, and as the backbone under which a regional political and social bloc could eventually be constructed. Scholars, intellectuals, and public officials engaged in the discussions around NAFTA in each of those fields shared ideas, built some consensus, and split on dissents following competing approaches and/or national cleavages. The current literature in those three major fields of discussion is rich, voluminous, and highly inspiring, sometimes making references to other integrative experiences. This article reviews these debates and highlights either the consensus or dissention witnessed in each of the three domains under which NAFTA has been discussed the most. Since NAFTA cannot be separated from the political and social contexts that the debates and discussions took place in, a reference to those political contexts can be made when explaining and summarizing the debates. At a time when the mainstream consensus around NAFTA is being challenged by U.S. President Trump's assumption that NAFTA is not about complementary economies but about economies competing against each other under a zero-sum game rationale, politics comes back to the forefront of North American affairs. The renegotiation of NAFTA will doubtless redefine the partnership among the three North American countries and the role that economic cooperation and integration entails for each.
Proliferation of Regional Trade Agreements: Complementing or Supplanting Multilateralism
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A REVIEW OF THE REGIONAL AGREEMENTS IN MULTILATERAL PERSPECTIVE
Multilateral trade ties between the members of the world trade organisation have been impacting the trade to the new dimensions and targets. Multilateral trade has been seen as a tool of inclusive growth and sustainable development across the developing and developed world. The developing countries have the rich resources remaining untapped. The developed countries has the technology and tools to use those resources. Multilateral is the real thing which connects both the developed and developing world. Although the WTO regime has done a tremendous job but still there is the problem of poverty and less development amongst the least developed countries. The regional co-operation agreements have come to help the regional imbalance while supplementing the WTO objectives. This review paper reviews the role of the regional cooperation agreements in the era of Multilateralism and internationalization of trade and industry.
US-Regional Agreements with Latin America - The Long and Unsuccessful Saga of CAFTA and the FTAA
2011
As the trade negotiations within the FTAA region become more complicated with many more options for both the United States and its Latin American partners, it becomes more difficult to determine the prime motivation for any of the partners. Some have argued that the US negotiating process can be best described as having multiple tracks. The first and primary track is a commitment to a reduction in average tariffs. The second track consists in sector or issue specific agreements which can not be easily concluded in a regional tariff reduction exercise. In order to simplify and manage the theoretical construct for this complicated bargaining process, this paper develops a sequential bargaining game framework and applies it to US-Latin American trade negotiations. Within this process, the US representing the offering party has multiple recipients. Not all recipients will simultaneously accept a sector or issue specific agreement. Consequently, the search for partners which may appear as a random walk is in reality a sequential probe for an agreeable partner starting with the WTO shifting to a regional FTAA then digressing to a sub-regional CAFTA and finally to a group of bilateral agreements. While a multilateral agreement within the confines of the WTO may appear to be the best solution, at first blush, a Hemisphere wide FTA may turn out to be the first best outcome, especially given the activities of the Europeans in the WTO. The Saga of CAFTA and the FTAA I. The first "Summit of the Americas" held in Miami in 1994, is considered to be the official initiation of the thirty-four Western Hemisphere 1 country negotiations designed to establish a Free Trade of the America's (FTAA). 2 Since 1994, there have been five summits 3 and eight trade ministerial meetings. 4 The first draft of the FTAA was adopted at the Quebec 1 The countries involved in the negotiations include: Antigua and Barbuda,
We have used the Michigan Model of World Production and Trade to simulate the economic effects on the NAFTA member countries and other major trading countries/regions of a prospective new round of WTO multilateral trade negotiations, the variety of free trade agreements (FTAs) that the NAFTA members have negotiated or are considering, and the adoption of a system of common external tariffs by the NAFTA members. We estimate that an assumed reduction of post-Uruguay Round tariffs on agricultural and industrial products and services barriers by 33 percent in a new WTO trade round would increase world welfare by 613.0billion,withgainsof613.0 billion, with gains of 613.0billion,withgainsof177.3 billion for the United States, 13.5billionforCanada,13.5 billion for Canada, 13.5billionforCanada,6.5 billion for Mexico, and significant gains for all other industrialized and developing countries. If there were global free trade, world welfare would increase threefold to $1.9 trillion and the country/region gains would be similarly larger.