Missed and New Opportunities in World Trade

Abstract

International trade has recently seen turbulent times. It has been subject of heated political and social debates and has generated an animated scholarly discourse. It is not an exaggeration to say that international trade is entering into a new age, where tariffs are no longer the major constraints (though they may still be high in certain sectors) and states endeavor to gain additional benefits through boosting trade via diminution of non-tariff barriers. In this era, bilateralism and regionalism carries the day. In line with the Doha Trade Round’s balking, which made the furtherance of the global multilateral system stall, a new generation of free trade agreements has been emerging. These agreements are comprehensive, ambitious, cover the whole spectrum of trade items (goods, services, technology, capital etc.) and have the makings of creating a new governance for international economic relations. This story, as noted above, no longer centers around tariffs and quotas. Though customs duties have certainly not lost their relevance, they share the scene with various other issues, such as regulatory cooperation, protection of value standards (labor rights, environmental protection), investment protection, public procurement, to mention a few. All this necessarily imposes further limits on national regulatory autonomy and calls for the re-conceptualization of the fundamental notions of global governance, state sovereignty and regulatory autonomy.