We don't agree fully with him, but Professor Bernard Gordon thinks we are and explains why in today's Wall Street Journal.
The latest sign that the postwar era of "multilateral" trade liberalization has ended came last week in Singapore. The event was an Association of Southeast Asian Nations ministerial meeting, where the 10-member grouping and India formally agreed to a "free trade" deal to take effect in January. At the same meeting, Asean leaders also agreed to establish yet another so-called "free trade agreement," this one with Australia and New Zealand.
That brings to roughly 400 the number of regional and bilateral trade agreements that have been notified to the World Trade Organization. Meanwhile, another try to keep the Doha Round of world trade talks alive will be made in Geneva later this month. But the prospects are not bright, and all of this has been very predictable. Scores of observers -- not only academics -- have regularly warned that bilateral and regional trade pacts, which are in fact preferential rather than free trade agreements, are both a cause and a consequence of a breakdown of the WTO system.
