RISING REGIONALIZATION: AN ASSESSMENT OF REGIONAL TRADE AGREEMENTS

Year 2024, Issue: 63, 131 - 158, 28.06.2024

Şerif Dilek

Abstract

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, with their scope of influence expanding beyond trade tariff reduction. Since the mid-20th century, multilateral trade negotiations have been used to liberalize 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, namely, 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.

Keywords

Global Trade System, Regional Trade Agreements, World Trade Organization

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