Book Review: Lurong Chen, Shujiro Urata, Junji Nakagawa, and Masahito Ambashi (Eds.), Emerging Global Trade Governance: Mega Free Trade Agreements and Implications for ASEAN
| Published date | 01 May 2020 |
| Author | Debashis Chakraborty |
| Date | 01 May 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0015732519894164 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Foreign Trade Review
55(2) 261–263, 2020
© 2020 Indian Institute of
Foreign Trade
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DOI: 10.1177/0015732519894164
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Lurong Chen, Shujiro Urata, Junji Nakagawa, and Masahito Ambashi
(Eds.), Emerging Global Trade Governance: Mega Free Trade Agreements
and Implications for ASEAN, London and New York, NY: Routledge and
Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA), 2019,
£115, 282 pp., ISBN (13) 9781138484764.
The Southeast Asian economies have over the past two decades shown a keen
interest to get integrated with the world economy, both regionally and multilater-
ally. The regional integration of the Southeast Asian economies into ASEAN Free
Trade Area (AFTA) has been followed by the bilateral regional trade agreements
(RTAs) involving China, India, Japan, South Korea and so on. Moreover, there
exists a large pool of country-specific RTAs. The process of RTA formation in the
Asia-Pacific theatre has been further aided by the slow progress of the Doha round
of negotiations, partly owing to the consensus requirement at the multilateral
forum. The other attractiveness of the newer RTAs has been the possibility of
including deeper reform measures, namely trade facilitation, competition policy,
investment agreement, government procurement policies, Trade Related
Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)-plus provisions, mutual recognition agree-
ments (MRAs) on technical standards, labour and environment provisions, and so
on. In order to free trade in a wider geographical area, the bilateral RTAs are
slowly giving way to the mega-regional agreements, namely Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP),
involving both developed and developing countries. TPP has particularly emerged
as a bloc involving participants from both sides of the Pacific, namely Australia,
Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan,...
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