International Economic Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

International Economic - Essay Example This century has specifically seen the Asian- Pacific regions that have been showing more interest in negotiating and implementing preferential trade agreements, with China, and now India, being main the ‘hub’ in the Asia-Pacific liberal trade group’s ‘hub and spoke’ agreements with other members of the WTO. An increase in this preference for bilateral and regional trade agreements or free trade agreements (FTPs) had been observed right from the 1980s, and has often been described by the experts as the rise in a ‘new regionalism’(Majluf, 2004). By the 15th September 2008, we find that there have been 222 regional trade agreements notified to the World Trade Organization (WTO) as been implemented, with many more in the pipeline. This regionalism has been of particular interest to many of the Pacific Rim countries (Lloyd, 2002). Even China has been diverted from its earlier engrossment with the assumption of WTO, and has started seeing gain s through these regional negotiations. However coming to a general consensus on the topic of bilateral relations and the issue of free international trade has never been easy, especially as certain industrial sectors and labour groups within the economy, have been said to be adversely affected through international competition. The debate between neoliberals and the leftists or the anti-neoliberal group form the core between these refusals to come to an easy consensus. On one hand we find that the leftists group claim â€Å"Globalization has dramatically increased inequality between and within nations† (Jay Mazur, US union leader, 2000); while on the other hand the neoliberals present statistical figures in their behalf and claim that â€Å"globalized developing countries have increased their per capita growth rate from 1% in the1960’s... to... 5% in 1990’s...much of the rest of the developing world-with about-2 billion people...their aggregate growth rate was actually negative in the 90s†( Collier and Dollar, 2002, 5). So the road to globalisation, free international trade and bilateral relations had never been easy with constant frictions between the experts from both camps. The current trade negotiations is the The  Doha Development Round  or  Doha Development Agenda (DDA), and is an ongoing process that had started in November 2001, and continues to develop till date, owing to a lack of consensus amongst the members of the participating countries. The chief objective of this negotiation round is to cut down on the various trade barriers that exist worldwide, and subsequently to increase international free trade.  In the Doha round of talks in 2008 (held in Geneva), negotiations were stopped over the lack of consensus on a range of important issues such as   removal of the industrial  tariff  and  non-tariff barriers, services, agriculture, and various trade remedies (Fergusson, 2008).  These differences created a cleavage between the developed nations  that were on side and led by United States (USA), European Union (EU), and Japan; while on the other side of the divide were the strong  developing countries  like China, India, Brazil, South Africa and South Korea. The primary