Regional Trade Institutions

Outline

This entry examines regional trading arrangements, the laws and agreements that govern such arrangements, and their relationship to the international institutions and laws covered in the legal Encyclopedia.

To familiarize students with the origins and structures of regional trade agreements, their role in governing international trade and investment, the extent to which they complement or undermine the multilateral system, and the reasons governments pursue their trading interests along more than one track. Students who successfully complete this course should be able to identify how and when to deploy regional agreements to address specific issues in international trade and investment, the pros and cons of regional approaches to a problem, and the limits of such agreements. Students should also be able to analyze the impact of such agreements on non­members and how non-members can address issues that may arise in relations with members of regional arrangements.

Topics Covered

The entry concentrates on a comparative analysis of four important regional agreements and arrangements: the European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Common Market of the Southern Cone (MERCOSUR), and APEC. Each of these agreements illustrates various characteristics of regionalism. The entry examines their origins, structure of their obligations, their institutional arrangements, and their relationships to each other and to the multilateral system. The entry also provides a cursory overview of the wide range of other regional arrangements as a prelude to a discussion of the positive and negative dimensions of regionalism and its possible future evolution.

Regional Rules

There is an interrelationship between regional and multilateral rules and institutions – motives, rules, characteristics, impacts, and tensions.

This section covers the origins of modern regionalism in Europe, and its echo in Africa, Latin America and Australasia – differences in motives, impacts and results.

European Regionalism

This section covers the full flowering of European regionalism – from the European Coal and Steel Community (1951) through the European Common Market and European Free Trade Area of the 1960s and 1970s to the European Union of the 1990s, including the relationships developed with various European dependencies and neighbours in the Mediterranean, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific.

It also includes an analysis of the motives, rules, politics, and institutions of European regionalism, and the impact of European regionalism on the multilateral trade regime and other major international traders.

Regionalism in America

This entry covers the regionalism in North America and its echo in Central and South America. It includes the origins, motives, characteristics, and impacts of the new regionalism (the Canada-US FTA, the North American FTA, the MERCOSUR, the Andean Pact, the CACM, the CARIBCOM, ANZCER, etc.

Resources

See Also

• International Trade Organizations
• International Trade Centre
• Regional organizations
• International Law of Trade
• Latin American Free Trade Association
• General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade resources
• Trade Agreements
• International Trade Law
• Economic Partnership Agreements
• Freer Trade
• European Free Trade Association
• Arbitral Institutions

Further Reading

• Anderson, Kym and Richard Blackhurst, eds., Regional Integration and the Global Trading System (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993).
• Bhagwati, Jagdish and Anne Krueger, The Dangerous Drift to Preferential Trade Agreements (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1995).
• Yoshida et. al., “Regional Economic Integration in East Asia: Special fetures and Policy Implications,” in Vincent Cable and David Henderson, eds., Trade Blocs? The Future of Regional Integration (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1994)
• Pushpa Thambipillai, “Continuity and change in ASEAN: the politics of regional cooperation in South East Asia,” in Andrew Axline, ed., The Political Economy of Regional Integration: Comparative Case Studies (London: Pinter, 1994)
• Gregory E. Fry, “International cooperation in the South Pacific: from regional integration to collective diplomacy,” in Andrew Axline, ed., The Political Economy of Regional Integration: Comparative Case Studies (London: Pinter, 1994)

• Alasdair Smith, “The Principles and Practice of Regional Economic Integration,” in Vincent Cable and David Henderson, eds., Trade Blocs? The Future of Regional Integration (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1994)
• Frieder Roesler, “The Relationship Between Regional Integration Agreements and the Multilateral Trade Order,” in Kym Anderson and Richard Blackhurst, eds., Regional Integra­tion and the Global Trading System (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993)
• Jagdish Bhagwati and Anne Krueger, The Dangerous Drift to Preferential Trade Agreements (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1995).
• OECD, Regional Integration and the Multilateral Trading System: Synergy and Divergence (Paris, 1995).

• Cable, Vincent and David Henderson, eds., Trade Blocs? The Future of Regional Integration (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1994).
• Hufbauer, Gary Clyde and Jeffrey J Schott, Western Hemispheric Economic Integration (Washington: Institute for International Economics, 1994).
• Lawrence, Robert Z., Regionalism Multilateralism and Deeper Integration (Washington: Brookings, 1995).
• National Planning Association, “Perspectives on Western Economic Integration, ” North American Outlook,. S. no. 4/volt 6, no. I (Winter 1995/6).
• OAS,Interim Report of the OAS Special Committee on Trade to the Western Hemisphere Trade Ministerial (Washington: OAS, 1995).
• David Henderson, “Putting ‘Trade Blocs’ into Perspective,” in Vincent Cable and David Henderson, eds., Trade Blocs? The Future of Regional Integration (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1994)
• Peter Drysdale and Ross Garnaut, “The Pacific: An Application of a General Theory of Economic Integration,” in Fred Bergsten and Marcus Noland, eds., Pacific Dynamism and the International Economic System (Washington: Institute for International Economics, 1993)

• OECD, Regional Integration and `he Multilateral Trading System: Synergy and Divergence (Paris: OECD. 1995).
• J.M.C. Rollo, “The EC, European Integration and the World Trading System,” in Vincent Cable and David Henderson, eds., Trade Blocs? The Future of Regional Integration (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1994)
• Gilbert R. Winham, Trading With Canada: The Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1988)
• Jeffrey J. Schott, NAFTA: An Assessment (Washington: Institute for International Economics, 1992)
• Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Jeffrey J. Schott, Western Hemispheric Economic Integration (Washington: Institute for International Economics, 1994)
• Peter Morici, Free Trade in the Americas (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1994).
• Sydney Weintraub, NAFTA: What Comes Next? (Westport, CT: Praeger for the: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1994)
• National Planning Association, “Perspectives on Western Economic Integration,” North American Outlook, vol. 5, no. 4/vol. 6, no. 1 (Winter 1995/6)
• Roberto Bouzas, “U.S.-Mercosur Free Trade,” in Sylvia Saborio, ed., The Premise and the Promise: Free Trade in the Americas (Washington: Overseas Development Council, 1992)
• Gordon Mace, “Consensus-building in the Andean integration system: 1968-1985,” in Andrew Axline, ed., The Political Economy of Regional Integration: Comparative Case Studies (London: Pinter, 1994)
• Payne, “The politics of regional cooperation in the Caribbean: the case of Caricom,” in Andrew Axline, ed., The Political Economy of Regional Integration: Comparative Case Studies (London: Pinter, 1994)

• Jeffrey Harrop, The Political Economy of Integration in the European Community (2d edition (Aldershot, IUK: Edward Elgar, 1992)
• Ernest Wistrich, After 1992: The United States of Europe, revised edition (London: Routledge, 1991

• Schott, Jeffrey I., NAFTA: An Assessment (Washington: Institute for International Economics, 1992).
• Trebilcock, Michael J. and Robert Howse, The Regulation of International Trade (New York: Routledge, 1995).