Asymmetric Trade Negotiations

The slow pace of the Doha Round has boosted the proliferation of regional and bilateral trade agreements. Paradoxically, the more powerful actors, the US and the European Union, who at the same time have benefited the most from the multilateral system, have also been engaged in bilateral and regional negotiations in order to sign WTO-plus agreements with developing countries. Combining a clear theoretical exposition with systematic cross-regional analysis, ’Asymmetric Trade Negotiations’ offers a coherent picture of strategic, design and political economy aspects of North-South trade negotiation processes, from African, Asian and Latin American perspectives. Skilled area specialists gather to provide negotiators and policy makers in the South with recommendations, best practices, and benchmarks and contribute to the understanding of these recent processes.

Philippe De Lombaerde is Associate Director at United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS) (Bruges, Belgium). Sanoussi Bilal is the Head of the Economic and Trade Cooperation Programme at the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) (Maastricht, The Netherlands). Diana Tussie directs the Department of International Relations at the Argentine campus of the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), and is founding director of the Latin American Trade Network.