The WTO agreement on trade facilitation: Consistency with regional trade agreements and the transition to paperless trade

It took many years, which were punctuated by various judgments about the relevance of the WTO, before the final text of a trade agreement was unanimously passed at the Ninth WTO Ministerial Conference in Bali. It may be light but the concluded ATF partly redeems the WTO’s fading importance in the multilateral trading system. The purpose of this chapter is to compare the results of the ATF with some of the regional trade agreements and the Agreement/Framework Agreement on Facilitation of Cross-Border Paperless Trade for the Asia Pacific Region (A/FA).

Related Subject(s): International Trade and Finance