This book provides an in-depth analysis of "Mega-Regionals", the new generation of trans-regional free-trade agreements (FTAs) currently under negotiation, and their effect on the future of international economic law. The main focus centres on the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), but the findings are also applicable to similar agreements under negotiation, such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).The specific features of Mega-Regional Trade Agreements raise a number of issues with respect to their potential effect on the current system of international trade and investment law. These include the consequences of Mega-Regionals for the most-favoured-nation (MFN) principle, their relation to the multilateral system of the World Trade Organization (WTO), their democratic legitimacy and their interaction with existing bilateral investment treaties (BITs).The book is intended for academics and practitioners working in the field of international economic law.

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the EU and Canada (CETA), proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the EU and the US (TTIP), and the plurilateral Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) between the EU and 22 other States have sparked a great deal of academic and public interest. This edited collection brings together leading experts in the field of international economic law to address the legal complexities of these treaties and provide an explanation of their core principles. In the first two chapters, this book examines changing conceptions of international economic law and the main motivations for negotiating mega-regional agreements. In nine further contributions, international experts examine sectoral issues such as the trade, investment, and dispute settlement procedures envisaged in these 'mega-regional' agreements. The book goes on to consider the progress made in intellectual property protection, the problems associated with data protection, human rights, labour, and environmental standards, issues of transparency and legitimacy, and the relationship between CETA, TTIP, and TiSA on the one hand and EU law on the other. It concludes with four chapters that discuss globalization and other fundamental questions surrounding these mega-regional agreements from economic, political science, and legal perspectives.

Deep trade agreements (DTAs) cover not just trade but additional policy areas, such as international flows of investment and labor and the protection of intellectual property rights and the environment. Their goal is integration beyond trade or deep integration. These agreements matter for economic development. Their rules influence how countries (and hence, the people and firms that live and operate within them) transact, invest, work, and ultimately, develop. Trade and investment regimes determine the extent of economic integration, competition rules affect economic efficiency, intellectual property rights matter for innovation, and environmental and labor rules contribute to environmental and social outcomes. This Handbook provides the tools and data needed to analyze these new dimensions of integration and to assess the content and consequences of DTAs. The Handbook and the accompanying database are the result of collaboration between experts in different policy areas from academia and other international organizations, including the International Trade Centre (ITC), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and World Trade Organization (WTO).

International trade has, for decades, been central to economic growth and improved standards of living for nations and regions worldwide. For most of the advanced countries, trade has raised standards of living, while for most emerging economies, growth did not begin until their integration into the global economy. The economic explanation is simple: international trade facilitates specialization, increased efficiency and improved productivity to an extent impossible in closed economies. However, recent years have seen a significant slowdown in global trade, and the global system has increasingly come under attack from politicians on the right and on the left. The benefits of open markets, the continuation of international co-operation, and the usefulness of multilateral institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have all been called into question. While globalization has had a broadly positive effect on overall global welfare, it has also been perceived by the public as damaging communities and social classes in the industrialized world, spawning, for example, Brexit and the US exit from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The purpose of this volume is to examine international and regional preferential trade agreements (PTAs), which offer like-minded countries a possible means to continue receiving the benefits of economic liberalization and expanded trade. What are the strengths and weaknesses of such agreements, and how can they sustain growth and prosperity for their members in an ever-challenging global economic environment? The Handbook is divided into two parts. The first, Global Themes, offers analysis of issues including the WTO, trade agreements and economic development, intellectual property rights, security and environmental issues, and PTAs and developing countries. The second part examines regional and country-specific agreements and issues, including NAFTA, CARICOM, CETA, the Pacific Alliance, the European Union, EFTA, ECOWAS, SADC, TTIP, RCEP and the TPP (now the CPTPP), as well as the policies of countries such as Japan and Australia.

Asia has witnessed a proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) since the turn of the millennium. The first regional agreement — the ASEAN FTA — was transformed into the ASEAN Economic Community at the end of 2015. In the meantime, ASEAN forged five ASEAN+1 FTAs and began to negotiate a sixteen-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement. In parallel, the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), supporting U.S. foreign policy of “Pivot to Asia”, was broadly agreed in October 2015. The RCEP and the TPP are accompanied by other mega-regional integration processes developing elsewhere in the world, including the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership for the European Union and the United States, and the Pacific Alliance among four Latin American member states. Meanwhile, APEC is also striving to meet its Bogor Goal targets and create a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific. Each of these mega-regionals aims to achieve greater trade and investment liberalization and facilitation and more harmonized trade and investment rules so that all member economies can participate in the global value chain of production. Instead of undermining, these regional exercises can be building blocks for a more liberal global trading system supported by the World Trade Organization. This book ruminates on these regional agreements, their economic and strategic rationales and challenges during negotiations and afterwards. The book brings together eminent scholars and experts to deepen our understanding of the complex nature of the mega-regional trade agreements and their implications. It is useful both for the academic and research community and for policymakers who focus on trade and economic cooperation issues.

African regional trade integration has grown exponentially in the last decade. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the legal framework within which it is being pursued. It will fill a huge knowledge gap and serve as an invaluable teaching and research tool for policy makers in the public and private sectors, teachers, researchers and students of African trade and beyond. The author argues that African Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) are best understood as flexible legal regimes particularly given their commitment to variable geometry and multiple memberships. He analyzes the progress made toward trade liberalization in each region, how the RTAs are financed, their trade remedy and judicial regimes, and how well they measure up to Article XXIV of GATT. The book also covers monetary unions as well as intra-African regional integration, and examines free trade agreements with non-African regions including the Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union.

The Japan-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPPA) of 2018 is the most far-reaching 'megaregional' economic agreement in force, with several major countries beyond its eleven negotiating countries also interested. Still bearing the stamp of the original US involvement before the Trump-era reversal, TPP is the first instance of 'megaregulation': a demanding combination of inter-state economic ordering and national regulatory governance on a highly ambitious substantive and trans-regional scale. Its text and ambition have influenced other negotiations ranging from the Japan-EU Agreement (JEEPA) and the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) to the projected Pan-Asian Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). This book provides an extensive analysis of TPP as a megaregulatory project for channelling and managing new pressures of globalization, and of core critical arguments made against economic megaregulation from standpoints of development, inequality, labour rights, environmental interests, corporate capture, and elite governance. Specialized chapters cover supply chains, digital economy, trade facilitation, intellectual property, currency levels, competition and state-owned enterprises, government procurement, investment, prescriptions for national regulation, and the TPP institutions. Country studies include detailed analyses of TPP-related politics and approaches in Japan, Mexico, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and Thailand. Contributors include leading practitioners and scholars in law, economics, and political science. At a time when the WTO and other global-scale institutions are struggling with economic nationalism and geopolitics, and bilateral and regional agreements are pressed by public disagreement and incompatibility with digital and capital and value chain flows, the megaregional ambition of TPP is increasingly important as a precedent requiring the close scrutiny this book presents.

'Regional Trade Agreements and the WTO Legal System' introduces the economic & political underpinnings of regional trade agreements, their constitutional functions, & their role as a locus for integrating trade & human rights.

ø Policy makers will benefit from the expert knowledge and policy lessons presented in this book, and development economists and researchers will profit from its critical examination of the world trading system. Undergraduate and postgraduate studen

Because of concern that OECD tariff reductions will translate into worsening export performance for the least developed countries, trade preferences have proven a stumbling block to developing country support for multilateral liberalization. The authors examine the actual scope for preference erosion, including an econometric assessment of the actual utilization and the scope for erosion estimated by modeling full elimination of OECD tariffs, and hence full most-favored-nation liberalization-based preference erosion. Preferences are underutilized due to administrative burden-estimated to be at least 4 percent on average-reducing the magnitude of erosion costs significantly. For those products where preferences are used (are of value), the primary negative impact follows from erosion of EU preferences. This suggests the erosion problem is primarily bilateral rather than a WTO-based concern.