Mega-regional negotiations: towards a new form of governance in world trade

Since the early 2010s, and with particular intensity in recent months, a number of far-reaching trade negotiations have been in the works worldwide. Among them are a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement between the United States and the European Union; a Free Trade Agreement between the European Union and Japan; a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership among the 10 member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Australia, India, New Zealand, China, Japan and the Republic of Korea; and a Free Trade Agreement among the latter three countries. These four processes (formally launched in 2013), come on top of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations under way since 2010 encompassing 12 countries of Latin America, North America, Asia and Oceania. All of these initiatives —referred to in the literature as mega-regional or mega-bilateral negotiations— are expected to have a profound impact on the global trade and investment architecture in the coming decades, especially in view of the continued impasse at the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Round.

الموضوعات ذات الصلة: Economic and Social Development