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This study presents evidence of increasing regionalization of international trade among 10 South American countries from 1980 to 2001. Regionalization of trade in South America is best described as an increasing trade among Spanish-speaking countries and increasing trade within the two regional agreements, the Andean Community and Mercosur. There is also evidence of border erosion in the continent, especially among the Mercosur members. These results emerge from a simple statistical analysis and are also economically significant when tested in a consistent gravity equation that controls for a set of macroeconomic and geographic variables.

The article studies the problem of the impact of non-tariff barriers on mutual trade in goods between the EAEU member states. This problem is considered using the example of assessing the impact of non-tariff regulation measures of Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan on imports of goods from other EAEU member states. The conducted research is based on domestic and foreign scientific works that use barrier components to build a gravitational model of foreign trade. To study the impact of non-tariff regulatory measures of Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan on import commodity flow from other EAEU member states, two time periods are considered – the period of 2010–2014 and the period 2017–2019. In the context of the periods under consideration, a gravitational model of foreign trade is constructed. As a result of building a model within the framework of the study, it was revealed that during the period of the EAEU existence (2017–2019), non-tariff measures of foreign trade regulation had a more significant and negative impact on imports of the studied countries than before the formation of the EAEU (2010–2014). The latter indicates the relevance and necessity of further research of this problem.

The main objectives of this study were to examine the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR) agricultural exports to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the tuning of the Agricultural Commodity Frequency Index (ACFI) to non-tariff measures (NTMs), and the coverage ratio of goods to determine the effects of the PRC’s NTMs on Lao PDR’s agricultural exports using a demand export model with a fixed-effect method. The authors found that Lao PDR’s agricultural exports to the PRC increased by an average of 46.91% from 2013 to 2020, covering a total of 51 product codes, comprising six of the most valuable product types (i.e., bananas, corn, tapioca flour, watermelon, sticky rice, and sweet potato) given priority by the PRC. Additionally, from 2013 to 2020, the average ACFI concentration with NTMs was 10.08%, and the average coverage ratio for goods was 14.43%. The results of statistical significance testing at 1% suggest that three factors demonstrated the most significant impact on value: agricultural products facing NTMs in the form of sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures and technical barriers to trade (TBTs), treaties with priority conditions regarding SPSs and priorities for agricultural products, and the real gross domestic product (GDP) of the PRC. Furthermore, a PRC GDP increase of 1% resulted in a 3.1235% impact on Lao PDR exports.

In this study, we would like to examine the export prospect of India in the era of neo-protectionism. This particular era is characterized by increased used of trade barriers mainly by the large economies and a very sluggish growth in world export as a whole. Our study shows that both tariff and non-tariff barriers as well as world income affect India’s exports significantly. And, India as of 2017–2018, exports nearly 40% of its exportable to the developed world. So, the present era is not very encouraging for India. As a strategic response, it may try to re-orient its exports from more restrictive developed countries like European Union to countries like Japan, which are much less restrictive, as complete re-orientation from developed to developing world is not possible.

Economic integration is an agreement among countries in a geographical region or unification of economic policies between different states aiming to reduce and ultimately remove tariff and non-tariff barriers on trade. The fruit of globalization is the tremendous rise of economic integration as globalization loosens barriers among the nations through reduction in cross-border duties and eases trade policies. Trumponomics is defined as the economic policies of US President Donald Trump that prefers high import tariff to bring “America First.” There is a debate among the researchers about the choice between free trade and protection or imposition of tariff. Some of them prefer free trade because during the start of the great depression, the world economy experienced a huge shift toward protectionism. Choice between no-tariff and tariff represents a prisoner’s dilemma situation whereby each player’s best response is to employ tariffs. This results in a sub-optimal outcome for all where the total volume of world trade falls, which is a Nash solution. The present chapter deals with theoretical discussions on trade war and throws light on the developing country’s choice between non-protectionism supported by globalization and Trump’s protectionism.

This chapter provides a legal and theoretical overview of environmental PPMs articulated in private standards. It seeks to expand the debate about environmental PPMs, elucidating important dimensions to the issue from the perspective of global governance and international trade law. One of the arguments advanced in this chapter is that a comprehensive analysis of environmental PPMs should consider not only their role in what is regarded as trade barriers (governmental and market driven) but also their significance in global objectives such as the transition towards a green economy and sustainable patterns of consumption and production.

This chapter is based on an extensive literature review and doctrinal legal research.

This research shows that environmental PPMs represent a key issue in the context of the trade and environment relationship. For decades such measures have been thought of as being trade distortive and thus incompatible with WTO law. Although it seems clear now that they are not unlawful per se, their legal status remains unsettled. PPMs can be regarded as regulatory choices associated with a wide range of environmental concerns. However, in trade disputes, challenged measures involving policy objectives addressing production issues in the conservation of natural resources tend to focus on fishing/harvesting techniques. On the other hand, an important goal of Global Environmental Governance (GEG) is to incentivise sustainable consumption and production in order to achieve the transition to a green economy. In this sense, it can be argued that what are generally denominated as ‘PPMs’ in the WTO terminology can alternatively be regarded ‘SCPs’ in the language of environmental governance. Environmental PPMs are not only limited to state-based measures, such as import bans, tariff preferences, and governmental labelling schemes. Environmental PPMs may also amount to good corporate practices towards environmental protection and provide the rationale for numerous private environmental standards.

Most academic attention afforded to environmental-PPMs has focused on their impacts on trade or their legality under WTO law. Although legal scholars have already referred to the significance of such measures in the context of environmental governance, this issue has remained almost entirely unexplored. This chapter seeks to fill the gap in the literature in this regard. In particular, it addresses the relevance of environmental PPMs in the context of decentralised governance initiatives such as the UN Global Compact and private environmental standards.

Overall, this chapter assists in the understanding of the significance of environmental PPMs in the context of private environmental standards and other governance initiatives involving goals related to sustainable consumption and production. This chapter adds to the existing body of literature on the subject of PPMs in international trade and environmental governance.

Considering the dynamic correlation between advances in information and communication technology (ICT) and contemporary politics, this chapter provides an economist insight into the role of ICT in the global economy. It is argued that the analysis of the relationship between ICT and politics would be incomplete if the direct and indirect influence ICT exerts on international economy was not considered. This chapter examines the features of the international trade in ICT seen as a complex reflection of the current stage of liberalization achieved at the forum of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and subsequent spillovers to other domains of economic and political collaboration worldwide. It is argued that ICT and its development not only result in the “shrinking of the distance” in the world economy but also stimulate economic liberalization, further reshuffling production from more- to less-advanced economies and, finally, help to overcome trade imbalances on the global scale. In brief, a case is made that ICT creates the conditions conducive to the enhancement of international political and economic collaboration.

This chapter reviews the evolution of thinking about regional trade agreements (RTAs) and the policy developments reflected in three waves of RTAs during the last half century. Desirable and undesirable features of RTAs can be identified, but the central message concerns the ambiguity of outcomes. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role of the nation state and of multilateral institutions and the scope for intermediate levels of organization created by RTAs.