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The Kyrgyz Republic has made major strides in the past decade in its transition to a market-based economy. Its trade and investment policies are arguably the most liberal among the member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Despite the generally progressive stance on structural policies and a sound record of macroeconomic management in recent years, economic growth has been modest, living standards are low, a large burden of external debt has accumulated, and integration into global production and trade remains limited. The growth agenda must address more carefully the constraints to greater supply-side response to ongoing reforms—an agenda that can facilitate a broad-based growth of economic activity and exports. Risks to sustainability of current growth rates and continued poverty reduction will otherwise remain high as will the economy’s vulnerability to external shocks. This report is aimed at assisting authorities fashioning this agenda by focusing on three key challenges:Identifying strategic options to strengthen prospects for medium- and long-term growth and poverty reduction; Assessing ways of leveraging domestic trade policy reforms and existing regional and multilateral trade agreements for further regional and global integration; and Identifying key areas where greater efforts are necessary to facilitate improvements in enterprise capability and productivity.

In the context of an increasingly complex international political and economic situation, major powers have promoted the formation of regional trade agreements of various forms and scope. The impact of MTAs on regional economic growth is explored in this topic, using the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEPA) as an illustration. Through mathematical modeling and quantitative assessment, a general equilibrium model of the impact of a multivariate trade agreement on regional economic development has been constructed. Different regions and industrial sectors related to the agreement are delineated, and different simulation scenarios are designed to assess the impact of MTAs on regional economic growth under different scenarios. The results show that the members and non-members of the MTA under different simulation scenarios are positively and negatively impacted to varying degrees, with Japan, Australia, and New Zealand among the RCEP members experiencing the most significant positive stimulus, with GDP growth of 3.95%, 2.89%, and 2.11%, respectively. Non-members had a negative impact on the scale of imports and exports and terms of trade, with the United States and India shrinking by 1.16% and 1.69%, respectively. Overall, the MTA contributes positively to the development of regional economic growth.

New horizons are opening for Africa, with a growing number of Chinese andIndian businesses fostering its integration into advanced markets. However,significant imbalances will have to be addressed on both sides of the equation to support long-term growth.

Countries are increasingly using free trade agreements (FTAs) and customs unions (CUs) to cooperate on environmental issues by including environmental provisions in regional trade agreements (RTAs). We examine whether countries form RTAs with regional environmental regulations and join a multilateral trade agreement (MTA) with a common environmental regulation that maximizes world welfare. Each government imposes an environmental tax to mitigate negative externalities caused by the consumption of differentiated goods. The main finding is that a deep FTA with regional harmonization of environmental taxes may act as a stumbling block for an MTA with multilateral harmonization of environmental taxes if the degree of product differentiation is intermediate. In contrast, a deep CU with a regional environmental tax serves as a building block, even if negative consumption externalities are transboundary.

This study examines how free trade agreements (FTAs) and customs unions (CUs) affect multilateral trade agreements when countries endogenously determine the standards as well as tariffs. Raising standards reduces the negative consumption externalities of a traded good but increases firms' costs. We find that a deep FTA with the harmonization of standards may be a stumbling block for multilateral free trade with the international standard that maximizes world welfare, whereas a deep CU with standards is a building block. As extensions, we consider asymmetry in firms' production costs and in the awareness of negative externalities between countries as well as transboundary externalities.

Various studies have been published that look at the regulatory frameworks for multilateral trade agreements and their economic advantages studies have examined regulatory environments of multilateral trade agreements, as well as the economic benefits of such arrangements. This study departs from the earlier studies by investigating the specific trade and employment benefits of SADC regional agreement on the member countries. Using annual dataset between 2000 and 2018 from both the SADC statistical centre and World Development Indicators, we deployed various diagnostics approaches to control for econometric biases that may render the results spurious and unreliable. The results of the non-tariff barrier model imply that, similar to export trade costs in the tariff model, investment in technology and the removal of tariff barriers are major factors in enhancing intra-regional trade among SADC nations. Thus, it is suggested that policies should be tailored towards improving export-processing infrastructure and related technological advancement in order to improve trade and alleviate unemployment concomitantly.

On May 22, 2014, the World Trade Organization’s Appellate Body (AB) issued its report on the controversial “ECSeal Products” dispute, finding that a European Union (EU or Union) prohibition on the importation and sale of seal products violated the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 (GATT). It did so, however, in a way that largely upheld the Union”s defense on animal welfare grounds, so that the prohibition remains effective. The decision marks the first time that the Appellate Body has found that a trade ban on animal welfare grounds falls within the exception under GATT Article XX(a) for measures necessary to protect public morals. This determination implicates the legality of future trade restrictions on animal welfare grounds, as well as restrictions imposed on human rights grounds, such as labor rights.

In a proceeding brought against the People's Republic of China by the United States, the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled that China violated its obligations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 by imposing export restrictions on \"rare earths,\" minerals used in mobile phones, hybrid cars, and other high-tech products. In upholding the earlier decision of a WTO dispute settlement panel, the Appellate Body rejected China's argument that export duties, quotas, and other restrictions could be justified by health and environmental concerns. Trujillo tackles more on the Appellate Body's decision and China's protocol of accession to the WTO.

For sustainable economic development, a continuous and successful economic transformation is critical, and supporting economic transformation requires a better understanding of the close interaction between technology and skill at the micro- and macro-levels. The technology-skill links should especially be important in today’s globalized world. This paper develops a large-scale global Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model by incorporating recent theoretical advances in international trade: Heterogeneous workers endogenously sort into different technologies based on their comparative advantage, and aggregate productivity is determined by skill-technology assignment in equilibrium. We then calibrate our model to a real-world data set, and investigate how multilateral free trade agreements affect individual member states, as well as outside countries and regions in the case of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Overall, the results show considerable real productivity gains and economic transformation effects, due to technology-upgrading mechanisms.

This article explores the issue of norm conflict in the context of specific multilateral agreements that are administered and enforced by the World Trade Organization (WTO), namely, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 (GATT), the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), and the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Any discussion of norm conflict between treaty provisions must necessarily draw a critical distinction between an apparent conflict, on the one hand, and a real conflict, on the other hand. An apparent conflict is one where the content of two or more norms is at first glance contradictory, yet the conflict can be avoided, most often by interpretative means. A real conflict represents an irreconcilable divergence between norms which cannot be interpreted away and can only be solved by the application of a conflict rule. The notion of intra WTO conflict is largely unexplored and consequently under-theorized. It is explored here not as an abstract notion, but rather against the backdrop of the institutional and normative environment of the WTO. It is submitted that intra WTO norm conflict is hardly likely to arise as a legal issue under WTO law. This is because the normative and institutional environment of the WTO militates against treating overlapping WTO provisions as situations of real norm conflict. This environment allows for, and potentially mandates a judicial approach to intra WTO conflict that accords with the telos of the single undertaking nature of WTO rights and obligations. In the result, intra WTO conflict will possibly never be real; will often be deemed as merely apparent; and will sometimes be avoided.