scholarly journals When politicization meets ideology: the European Parliament and free trade agreements

Author(s):  
Marta Migliorati ◽  
Valerio Vignoli

Abstract Since the Lisbon Treaty, the European Parliament (EP) has considerably increased its competencies in European Union (EU) trade policy. At the same time, a ‘new generation’ of free trade agreements (FTAs), including the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the United States, Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada, and the agreement with Japan, have been negotiated by the European Commission. Although existing literature has tackled the process of the EP's institutional self-empowerment in this policy area, there is no systematic research investigating the lines of conflict within the EP over FTAs. Through a newly collected dataset of all EP plenary debates between 2009 and 2019 on six relevant FTAs, we extract EP Members’ (MEPs) preferences by means of a manual textual analysis. We then test the explanatory power of the two traditional lines of cleavages within the EP over MEPs stated preferences: position on the left-right axis and support for EU integration. We find that both these dimensions fundamentally shape the conflict in the EP over FTAs. The impact of these two ideological cleavages is magnified in the context of politicized FTAs, namely the TTIP and CETA. Through these findings, the paper significantly contributes to the research on competition in the EP and, more broadly, to the understanding of EU trade policy and its emerging politicization dynamics.

Author(s):  
Juan Carlos Lara Gálvez ◽  
Alan M. Sears

This chapter discusses the impact of free trade agreements (FTAs) on intermediary liability in Latin America, with special emphasis on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA) provisions that have been included into every bilateral FTA the United States has entered into since 2002, thus promoting their inclusion in the national law of other countries. However, these provisions are controversial, and whether they drive the internet economy or create a more restrictive online space is a matter of debate. This chapter analyses the impact of such provisions in Latin American countries and the state of their implementation in national jurisdictions. In particular, this chapter reviews implementation and proposed implementation of the DMCA model in Chile, Costa Rica and other CAFTA bloc countries, Colombia, and Peru. It also discusses the failure of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement to create new intermediary liability rules and how the same language was ultimately included in the revision of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which became the US–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA).


2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (05) ◽  
pp. 1550098
Author(s):  
KICHUN KANG ◽  
PHYLLIS KEYS ◽  
YOON S. SHIN

Recent literature on the dynamics of export destinations has argued that firms export their products to new markets that are geographically close and culturally related to their previous export destinations. A modified version of [Melitz, M (2003). The impact of trade on intra-industry reallocations and aggregate industry productivity. Econometrica, 71(6), 1695–1725.] model suggests that a preferential trade agreement may provide inefficient firms with opportunities to export their products to third destination countries. This paper finds that new Korean products have been exported to the Chile market because of reductions in Chilean tariffs and the experience gained from exporting to the Chilean market has increased the likelihood of subsequent export to other countries in South America. The paper provides direct evidence that a free trade agreement (FTA) can serve as a stepping stone to other markets.


2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 92-95
Author(s):  
Kathleen Claussen

These remarks are derived from a forthcoming work considering the future of international trade law. Compared with most features of the international legal system, the regional and bilateral trade law system is in the early stages of its evolution. For example, the United States is a party to fourteen free trade agreements currently in force, all but two of which have entered into force since 2000. The recent proliferation of agreements, particularly bilateral and regional agreements, is not unique to the United States. The European Union recently concluded trade agreement negotiations with Canada, Singapore, and Vietnam to add to its twenty-seven agreements in force and is negotiating approximately ten additional bilateral or multilateral agreements. In the Asia-Pacific Region, the number of regional and bilateral free trade agreements has grown exponentially since the conclusion of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Free Trade Area of 1992. At that time, the region counted five such agreements in force. Today, the number totals 140 with another seventy-nine under negotiation or awaiting entry into force. The People's Republic of China is negotiating half a dozen bilateral trade agreements at present to top off the sixteen already in effect. India likewise is engaged in at least ten trade agreement negotiations. The World Trade Organization (WTO) reports 267 agreements of this sort in force among its members as of July 1, 2016.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 20160074 ◽  
Author(s):  
Surender Kumar ◽  
Prerna Prabhakar

This paper analyses the role of Free Trade Agreements in determining export and import efficiency levels in India using stochastic frontier version of gravity model. We estimate the impact of selected FTAs of India (its bilateral FTAs, FTA with ASEAN and South Asian FTA) and regulatory quality on the efficiency of exports and imports over the period of 2000–2014. The results indicate that India’s bilateral FTAs and its FTA with the ASEAN group help in improving the export and import efficiency respectively. However, the South Asian Free Trade Agreement is statistically insignificant for India’s export and import efficiency. The results also highlight importance of trading partners’ regulatory quality for enhancing the India’s trade efficiency and note that the impacts of regulatory quality are non-monotonic.


2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Dent

AbstractSince the late 1990s there has been a rapid proliferation of bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) projects in East Asia and the Asia-Pacific, regions previously largely devoid of FTA activity by comparison to others. As this trend has intensified, so have discussions on whether it will help advance regional co-operation and integration. This paper examines the nature of FTAs themselves and the main causes of East Asia and Asia-Pacific FTAs. The 'lattice regionalism' hypothesis is considered: whether dense economic bilateralism provides a sub-structural foundation on which economic regionalism (i.e. co-operation and integration) can build. Closely related is the issue of competing FTA models and modalities in the Asia-Pacific, and special attention is afforded to the 'asymmetric neoliberal' FTA model of the United States and the 'developmental–industrial' FTA model championed by Japan. It is argued that the contrasts between these make the emergence of an Asia-Pacific FTA unlikely in even the distant future. Japan's FTA model is also considered relative to perhaps East Asia's most important FTA project, the ASEAN–China FTA (ACFTA), and we discuss how bilateral FTA developments in the region more generally may or may not lead to enhanced regional economic co-operation and integration in East Asia.


Author(s):  
Raşit Gültekin ◽  
Mustafa Erkan Üyümez

The last period of international trade in goods covers a process carried out with globalization and regionalization efforts. Many countries, on the one hand, take part in arrangements that are executed under the leadership by global actors and aim at removing or reducing conventional obstacles to international trade, on the other hand, participate in various and regional economic integrations to provide a more deep and comprehensive economic cooperation and to cope with the competition and trade restrictions which continually increasing due to political, commercial and economical motives. Trade relations between Turkey and Russian Federation is an important element of the two countries' multidimensional cooperation. The most effective attempt to raise the top level of the volume and quality of existing commercial relationships will be the signing and putting into practice of a comprehensive free trade agreements between the two countries that have not been done previously. The purpose of this study is to determine the potential effects of such a free trade agreements between Turkey and Russian Federation in terms of trade in goods between two countries. To this end, in this study, theoretical aspects of free trade agreements' effects and place within regional integration types will be considered the impact of the possible Turkey-Russia free trade agreement will be examined in a framework of basic provisions with customs duties that set out in free trade agreements, recent trade data and key issues related to these countries.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-81
Author(s):  
Tresna Ritaningsih ◽  
Dedi Budiman Hakim ◽  
Sahara Sahara

Indonesia has several free trade agreements with trading partners that aimed to eliminate tariff and non tariff trade barriers. One of the free trade agreements is ASEAN-Korea FTA. Trade agreement in goods in ASEAN-Korea FTA was agreed since 2007 and now it is entering the implementation phase. The objective of this research is to determine whether the ASEAN-Korea FTA would increase the trade flows between Indonesia and ASEAN-Korea’ countries by analyzing the impact of regional integration on trade creation and trade diversion. This research is utilized balance panel data including 13 countries from 1998-2012. The empirical result shows that all Indonesia's trading sectors experienced decline because of trade diversion and trade creation does not occur. Indonesia's import trading with the non-member countries of ASEAN-Korea is 68% lower than the existing trading. Key word: trade creation, trade diversion, free trade agreement, trade in goods


China Report ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 442-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nguyen Xuan Trung ◽  
Nguyen Duc Hung ◽  
Nguyen Thi Hien

In this article, we use the technique of stochastic frontier estimation for the structural gravity model to analyse Vietnam’s bilateral trade and evaluate its exploitation of trade efficiency before and after its free trade agreements (FTAs) with China and India entered into force. The results from Vietnam’s bilateral trade data between 2000 and 2015 show that the ASEAN–India Free Trade Agreement (AIFTA) has had a positive impact on Vietnam’s bilateral trade flows while we found a remarkably negative effect on Vietnam’s exports but not imports after the entry into force of the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA). In addition, Vietnam’s participation in the regional trade agreements (RTAs) and FTAs has significantly reduced the costs of trade over time, and these impacts on Vietnam’s imports are much higher than those on Vietnam's exports.


Author(s):  
Nguyen Thi Hoang Oanh

The important year of 1995 marked Vietnam’s first integration as a member of ASEAN. By 2016, Vietnam had negotiated, signed, and implemented sixteen free trade agreements. They include both multilateral and bilateral free trade agreements such as the China-ASEAN, Vietnam-Chile, and Vietnam-Japan agreements. By signing free trade agreements Vietnam can increase trade flows in bilateral and multilateral developed-country FTA scenarios. Trade creation and diversion can be found in multilateral developing-country FTA scenarios and the author finds the impacts of each free trade agreement is different if analyzed for each 2-digit commodity. Keywords Free trade agreement, trade, import, export.t commodity References [1] Baier, S.L., Bergstrand, J.H., “Do free trade agreements actually increase members’ international trade?”, Journal of International Economics, 71 (2007), 72-95.[2] Chong, Soo Yuen & Hur, Jung, “Small Hubs, Large Spokes and Overlapping Free Trade Agreements”, The World Economy, 10.1111/j (2008), 1467-9701.[3] Hur, J., Alba, J. D., & Park, D., “Effects of hub-and-spoke free trade agreements on trade: A panel data analysis”, World Development, 38 (2010) 8, 1105-111.[4] McDonald, S. & Walmsley, Terrie, “Bilateral Free Trade Agreements and Customs Unions: The Impact of the EU Republic of South Africa Free Trade Agreement on Botswana”, The World Economy, 10.1111/j (2008),1467-9701.[5] Pan, S., Welch, M., Mohanty, S., Fadiga, M., & Ethridge, D., “Welfare analysis of the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States free trade agreement: The cotton textile and apparel industries”, The International Trade Journal, Vol. XXII (2008) 2, 1521-0545.[6] Benedictis, L., Santis, R., Vicarelli, C., “Hub-and-Spoke or else? Free trade agreements in the “enlarged” European Union”, The European Journal of Comparative Economics, 2 (2005) 2, 245-260.[7] Nguyen, Q.H., & Nguyen, T.H., “The impact of free trade agreement on trade flow of goods in Vietnam”, Vietnam Economist Annual Meeting, 2015[8] Das, R.U., Rishi, M., Dubey, J.D., “Asean plus six and successful FTAS: Can India propel intra-industry trade flows?”, The Journal of Developing Areas, 50 (2016) 2.[9] Hayakawa, K., “Impact of diagonal accumulation rule on FTA utilization: Evidence from bilateral and multilateral FTAs between Japan and Thailand”, J. Japanese Int. Economies, 32 (2014), 1-16.[10] Jennifer Y. Leung, “Bilateral vertical specialization between the U.S. and its trade partners - before and after the free trade agreements”, International Review of Economics and Finance, 45 (2016), 177-196.[11] Jongwanich, J., & Kohpaiboon, A., “Exporter responses to FTA tariff preferences: evidence from Thailand”, Asian Pacific Economic Literature (2017).[12] Lakatos, C., & Walmsley, T., “Investment creation and diversion effects of the ASEAN-China free trade agreement”, Economic Modelling, 29 (2012), 766-779.[13] Vanhnalat, B. at el., “Assessment the Effect of Free Trade Agreements on Exports of Lao PDR”, International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, 5 (2015) 2, 365-376.[14] Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), “Freedom of international trade in Vietnam”, Research report, Vietnam, 2015.


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