Mega-regional trade agreements erode WTO centricity and carry significant risks for countries excluded from the negotiations. The international community must identify ways to minimise these risks and find ways to ensure these trade deals can instead be a source of new opportunities, even for countries outsides these deals. The key challenge for policymakers in international trade over the coming years will be to ensure that mega-regional and plurilateral agreements complement rather than undermine the multilateral trading system. The rise in selective associations between WTO members, aimed at a deeper integration of their economies, has fundamentally changed the dynamics of trade negotiations at the global level. The 10th WTO Ministerial Conference, held in Nairobi in December 2015, yielded only limited results. While the United States and the European Union called for the conclusion of the Doha Round, developing and emerging countries expressed a desire to keep the agenda alive. Expectations now are that global trade policy will be increasingly negotiated in smaller groups. As the new “main loci of global trade governance for beyond-WTO issues,”[1] mega-regionals have caused widespread concerns. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the plurilateral Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), have been...
Written by Fabian Bohnenberger