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.

This book brings together international perspectives on free trade issues that affect civil society from the general populace to the governments of nations, and is relevant not only for lawyers, but also policymakers, international actors and businesses, as well as those with a general interest in free trade agreements. The book examines the manifestation of the concept of free trade in agreements, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA). It asks whether such agreements are entered into for the purposes of enhancing trading relationships between partner nations, strengthening commercial ties, and fostering economic growth; or are they sometimes used merely for local political outcomes of the most influential nations.

The United States is considering two mega-regional free trade agreements that its participants argue are comprehensive and high-standard: the recently concluded Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) among the United States and 11 other countries, and the U.S.-European Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP), still under negotiation. The 12 TPP countries signed the agreement in February 2016, but the agreement must be ratified by each country before it can enter into force. In the United States, this requires implementing legislation by Congress. Discussions of these and other FTAs often focus on trade balances, particularly U.S. bilateral merchandise trade balances with its FTA partner countries, as one way of measuring the success of the agreement. Although bilateral merchandise trade balances can provide a quick snapshot of the U.S. trade relationship with a particular country, most economists argue that such balances serve as incomplete measures of the comprehensive nature of the trade and economic relationship between the United States and its FTA partners. Indeed, current trade agreements include trade in services, provisions for investment, and trade facilitation, among others that are not reflected in bilateral merchandise trade balances. This report presents data on U.S. merchandise (goods) trade with its Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partner countries. The data are presented to show bilateral trade balances for individual FTA partners and groups of countries representing such major agreements as the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement and Dominican Republic (CAFTA-DR) relative to total U.S. trade balances. This report also discusses the issues involved in using bilateral merchandise trade balances as a standard for measuring the economic effects of a particular FTA.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks attempt to link together at least nine countries in three continents to create a 'high-quality, twenty-first century agreement'. Such an agreement is intended to open markets to competition between the partners more than ever before in sectors ranging from goods and services to investment, and includes rigorous rules in the fields of intellectual property, labour protection and environmental conservation. The TPP also aims to improve regulatory coherence, enhance production supply chains and help boost small and medium-sized enterprises. It could transform relations with regions such as Latin America, paving the way to an eventual Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific, or see innovations translated into the global trade regulatory system operating under the WTO. However, given the tensions between strategic and economic concerns, the final deal could still collapse into something closer to a standard, 'twentieth-century' trade agreement.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) between 12 Pacific Rim countries has generated the most intensive political debate about the role of trade in the United States in a generation. The TPP is one of the broadest and most progressive free trade agreements since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The essays in this Policy Analysis provide estimates of the TPP's benefits and costs and analyze more than 20 issues in the agreement, including environmental and labor standards, tariff schedules, investment and competition policy, intellectual property, ecommerce, services and financial services, government procurement, dispute settlement, and agriculture. Through extensive analysis of the TPP text, PIIE scholars present an indispensable and detailed "reader's guide" that also sheds light on the agreement's merits and shortcomings. In Rich People Poor Countries, Caroline Freund identifies and analyzes nearly 700 emerging-market billionaires whose net worth adds up to more than $2 trillion. Freund finds that these titans of industry are propelling poor countries out of their small-scale production and agricultural past and into a future of multinational industry and service-based mega firms. And more often than not, the new billionaires are using their newfound acumen to navigate the globalized economy, without necessarily relying on political connections, inheritance, or privileged access to resources. This story of emerging-market billionaires and the global businesses they create dramatically illuminates the process of industrialization in the modern world economy.

In this conference volume, distinguished economists and trade policymakers address the US initiatives to enter into free trade negotiations with a broad range of countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the Western Hemisphere, and Africa. The sheer number of these initiatives is unprecedented and has provoked major policy questions concerning US interests in the negotiations, the setting of priorities among the many contenders for concluding free trade agreements (FTAs) with the United States, the objectives of those trading partners, and the implications that these agreements could have for broader initiatives such as the Doha Round in the World Trade Organization and the Free Trade Area of the Americas. The papers in the volume were presented during a conference on FTAs and US trade policy, sponsored by the Institute in May 2003. The editor, Jeffrey Schott, summarizes the policy implications drawn from the conference papers and discussions, which are organized around several topics: the conceptual case for FTAs and how they have worked in the past; what FTAs imply for the broader global system; the specific agreements that are already being pursued (Australia, Central America, Morocco, southern Africa) or considered (ASEAN, Brazil, Egypt, Korea, and Taiwan). The volume includes a technical appendix with results of GTAP and gravity model simulations of the trade and welfare effects of the prospective agreements.