The Impact of the Rise Global Supply Chains on the New Tendencies in the Contemporary Foreign Trade Policy

Zdzisław W Puślecki

doi:10.20849/iref.v2i1.310

Abstract

The main aim of the article is indication of impact of the rise global supply chains on the new tendencies in contemporary foreign trade policy. The subject of the discussion and theoretical contribution in the undertaken research program is presents new tendencies in international trade—the rise of global supply chains, the impact of the rise global supply chains on the political economy of trade and countries motivations for cooperating on trade policies and the rise of global supply chains and increasing importance of bilateral agreements in the foreign trade policy. It is important to underline that a few multinational firms are responsible for a major share of world trade and for the rise of global supply chains. On the one hand, these firms should support regulatory harmonization across different Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) in order to lower trade costs. On the other hand, they might also resist harmonization—and encourage certain non-tariff measures—in order to prevent new competitors from entering markets. This may partly explain the persistence of regulatory divergence, and suggests that the political economy of regulatory convergence, especially in the conditions of the rise global supply chains, may be more important and more complex than is sometimes suggested.

Highlights

International trade during the rise of global supply chains interfaces with many other policy areas, such as macroeconomic policy, intellectual property, environmental protection, health and employment
During the rise of global supply chains the development of various firm models has made it possible to explore the effects of differences in firms on the political economy of trade
The picture that arises from the trade is that even if many firms are indirectly involved in trade-related activities, only relatively few are exporting or importing and these firms tend to be larger and more productive than others

Summary

Introduction

International trade during the rise of global supply chains interfaces with many other policy areas, such as macroeconomic policy, intellectual property, environmental protection, health and employment. In some of these policy areas, there are well-developed multilateral regimes, while in other areas multilateral cooperation is more incipient and institutional frameworks are less developed. In the time of the rise of global supply chains the question arises as to whether these will be used to set up a more cooperative system of exchange rates at the international level, and what role the World Trade Organisation (WTO) will play in this system. The challenge of securing agreement is made more acute by the need to resolve difficult questions during the rise of global supply chains about the effectiveness of different policies and their impact on trading partners, the answers to which depend on a number of factors, such as the technology involved, the characteristics of the sector and the markets at issue

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