Global Value Chains and EU–East Asia Trade: An Antidote for Geo-Economic Competition?

Abstract

In light of this volume’s overall ambition to study to what extent the European Union’s trade agreements with East Asia are driven by geo-economic interests, this chapter discusses the impact of the rise of global value chains on the desire and ability of the EU to use these trade agreements for geo-economic purposes. According to the dominant liberal thesis on the relationship between global value chains and trade policy, the rise of global value chains will lead the EU to pursue more liberal, deep and comprehensive trade agreements and make it less willing to subordinate economic to foreign policy objectives. However, two alternative views challenge this hypothesis. According to a geo-economic perspective, global value chains stimulate security concerns and international rivalry resulting in a more strategic trade policy agenda. While a fair-trade perspective states that global value chains lead to stronger calls for integrating sustainable development goals in trade policy and empower the EU to use trade agreements for these purposes. This chapter first lays out the liberal thesis before discussing its challengers. It ends with some considerations about how specific analyses can differentiate geo-economic from liberal and fair-trade interests in EU-East Asia trade agreements.