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has majority of East Asian countries that “continued their own dynamic industrial and trade
policies initiated in 1960s”. The second group includes countries which have gone through the
reform programmes designed and dictated by the IFIs. The third group includes the “Latin
American countries that undertook economic reform since early 1980s, initially under the
pressure from IFIs. Nevertheless, in 1990s they intensified their reform process without having
been necessarily under pressure of those institutions in all cases. The contents and philosophy
of their reform programmes were, however, similar to those designed by the IFIs which in turn
have been referred to as the “Washington Consensus” since the early 1990s. Universal and
uniform trade liberalization was a part of that “Consensus” (Shafaeddin, 2005:2).

The World Bank defines a regional trade agreement as a treaty between two or more
governments that arrive at an agreement on the rules of trade for all signatories. Examples of
regional trade agreements include the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),
Central American-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), the EU and
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) (Mattoo and Ruta, 2018). Some of the Asian
FTAs include Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-India FTA and the ASEAN-
China FTA. In fact, China has as many as 16 active FTAs and another eight under negotiations.
The Chinese Government deems FTAs as a new platform to further open up to the world and
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step up the domestic economic reforms. Like China, ASEAN, which is the representative body
of the ten Southeast Asian countries, also emphasises on the regional trade agreements. Apart
from leading the negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP),
ASEAN has FTAs with its dialogue partners: China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South
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Korea. As far as EU is concerned, it has FTAs with countries across regions. The EU usually
signs three main types of agreements

 Customs Unions: eliminate customs duties in bilateral trade and establish a joint
customs tariff for foreign importers;
 Association Agreements, Stabilisation Agreements, (Deep and Comprehensive)
Free Trade Agreements and Economic Partnership Agreements: remove or
reduce customs tariffs in bilateral trade; and,
 Partnership and Cooperation Agreements: provide a general framework for
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bilateral economic relations leave customs tariffs as they are.

Greater integration with the international economic architecture has proved to be a powerful
tool for countries in promoting their domestic economic growth, development, and reduce
poverty. Over the past 20 years, the growth of world trade has averaged 6 percent per year,
twice as fast as world output. But trade has been an engine of growth for much longer as since
1947, when the GATT was created, the world trading system benefited from eight rounds of
multilateral trade liberalisation, as well as from unilateral and regional liberalisation
(International Monterey Fund, 2001).

However, globalisation and trade liberalisation are facing a downfall today. Arguably, its
hardest times in decades, the blow to trade liberalisation is spearheaded by the Donald J. Trump
administration of the United States, which is defined by its protectionist stands- a set of policies
that go against the decades-old policy of the country. The 2018 G7 summit turned out to be a
major upsetting event in that context. Trump refused to ease steel and aluminium tariffs he had

5 For details on China’s FTAs, see Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China (2019).
6 For details on ASEAN’s FTAs, see Association of Southeast Asian Nations (2019).
7 For details on EU’s regional trade agreements, see European Union. (2019).
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