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The crisis of international trade and its cultural and political implications: Is the EU’s approach contributing to a renewal of multilateralism?

par Telo, Mario
Référence Towards a New Multilateralism: Cultural Divergence and Political Convergence?, Taylor and Francis, page (71-94)
Publication Publié, 2021-03

Partie d'ouvrage collectif

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Résumé :

Trade has always been more than specific reciprocity (do ut des): not only mutual trust and issue-linkage but also the trade political and cultural implications have been always extremely relevant both in the history of trade and within the current multipolar world. This chapter first presents the alternative options facing the world’s main trade powers in a context of World Trade Organization/Doha Round deadlock. Is a WTO reform, addressing all its functions, realistic in a foreseeable time? Will the Trump administration mix between trade wars and transactional bilateralism prevail? What about building a large convergence on an innovative combination of regional, interregional, and global endeavors aiming at a new era of trade arrangements, containing protectionism, trade wars, and isolationism? Second, the chapter focuses on background, development, and achievements of the EU new trade policy. Among these are its understanding of the “second generation of free trade and arrangements,” which are in fact standard-upgrading agreements and “regulatory arrangements,” including Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (EU and Canada) with Canada, trade agreements with South Korea, Vietnam, and Japan; the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), including the proposal of replacing the investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS) conflict-setting mechanism; and the ongoing negotiations on trade and/or investment regulation with other relevant partners, including the Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) with China. The perspective of a new, deeper, and broader idea of reciprocity opens the door to new understandings of trade’s cultural impact on the one hand, and on multiple and various forms of cooperation reviving multilateralism by new ways on the other.