Trade And Politics In The Pacific Area:Trends In Multilateral Trade Negotiations

The paper analyzes the ongoing multilateral trade negotiations from the Asia – Pacific area in the larger context of the shift of the economic center of the world economy from the Atlantic to the Pacific area. The high economic dynamism of the region has been accompanied in the past two decades by the establishment of a large number of bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements that included in many cases regulations on investments and other topics. In the wake of the Doha Round of negotiations failure, two more or less competing large multilateral trade negotiations (Trans Pacific Partnership and Regional Comprehensive Economic Cooperation) are presented in the context of the rise of the economic and political power of China in the region and of the interest of USA to maintain its decades long influence in the Pacific area. The conclusion is that given the strong economic interactions among the countries of the region, regional interests will prevail and the existing and new agreements will, in fact, pave the way first to a comprehensive regional trade and investment agreement and then to a global one.