Negotiating Free Trade Agreements

Draws on both theory and evaluations of several major Preferential trading arrangements (PTAs) to discuss the constraints to achieving liberalisation in PTAs and key problems facing negotiators trying to achieve the best outcomes within given political economy constraints, such as choice of rules of origin and dispute settlement procedures.

On 2 January 1988, Canada and the United States signed what was then the most comprehensive free trade agreeement the world had ever seen. This book is the story of those FTA negotiations, the preparations for and conduct of the negotiations, as well as the ideas and issues behind them. From their unique perspective as participants, Michael Hart, Bill Dymond, and Colin Robertson capture the drama and the personalities involved in the long struggle to make a free trade deal. They describe the extensive consultations, the turf-fighting among insiders, the innate caution of both politicians and bureaucrats, and the need to cultivate powerful constituencies in order to overcome the inertia of conventional wisdom.

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.

An account of the negotiations that in 1993-1994 led to the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT) between the federal government and the provinces. The authors position AIT as a significant achievement, signalling important changes in both federalism and policy formation.

The Domestic Politics of International Trade considers the issues surrounding intellectual property rights in international trade negotiations in order to examine the challenges posed to domestic policy-makers by the increasingly broad nature of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). Throughout the book the author demonstrates the importance of domestic politics in understanding the nature and outcome of international negotiations, particularly as they relate to international economic diplomacy. The book looks in detail at the intellectual property negotiations which formed part of the US-Peru and US-Colombia Free Trade Agreements and analyses the extent to which public health authorities and other parties affected by the increased levels of intellectual property protection were integrated into the negotiation process. The book then juxtaposes these findings with an analysis of the domestic origins of US negotiation objectives in the field of intellectual property, paying particular attention to the role of the private sector in the development of these objectives. Based on a substantial amount of empirical research, including approximately 100 interviews with negotiators, capital based policy-makers, private sector representatives, and civil society organisations in Lima, Bogotá and Washington, DC, this book offers a rare account of different stakeholders’ perceptions of the FTA negotiation process. Ultimately, the book succeeds in integrating the study of domestic politics with that of international negotiations. This book will be of particular interest to academics as well as practitioners and students in the fields of international law, economic law, intellectual property, political economy, international relations, comparative politics and government.