The main aim of the article is indication of impact of the rise global supply chains on the new tendencies in contemporary foreign trade policy. The subject of the discussion and theoretical contribution in the undertaken research program is presents new tendencies in international trade—the rise of global supply chains, the impact of the rise global supply chains on the political economy of trade and countries motivations for cooperating on trade policies and the rise of global supply chains and increasing importance of bilateral agreements in the foreign trade policy. It is important to underline that a few multinational firms are responsible for a major share of world trade and for the rise of global supply chains. On the one hand, these firms should support regulatory harmonization across different Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) in order to lower trade costs. On the other hand, they might also resist harmonization—and encourage certain non-tariff measures—in order to prevent new competitors from entering markets. This may partly explain the persistence of regulatory divergence, and suggests that the political economy of regulatory convergence, especially in the conditions of the rise global supply chains, may be more important and more complex than is sometimes suggested.
Does Compliance Pay? Social Standards and Firm-level Trade
