Regionalism

The champions of regionalism address and counter each one of the aforementioned issues. New York: European Community Studies Association and Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1995. These countries must indicate publicly both their regional liberalization program and their willingness to extend that liberalization to all members of global organizations, such as the WTO, on a reciprocal basis. Outsiders would accept offers from regional trade organizations in order to avoid being discriminated against by countries that account for half the world’s economy. The advantage of overcoming current preferential discrimination offered to MFNs would be enticing enough to convince most countries to take the additional step of freeing trade with all partners rather then a selected few while still maintaining regional ties, this is exactly what “open regionalism” does. According to Bergsten, APEC is the largest regional trade organization in the world and is potentially the most far-reaching trade agreement in history, therefore, APEC is a major factor in the world trading system and its embrace of “open regionalism” has propelled this concept into the global marketplace. According to Yale University’s Bruce Russett, some organizations have single or multiple purposes, however, according to Russett, all international trade organizations have these purposes or functions. However, most economic scholars agree that regional and global liberalization have proceeded together and have tended to reinforce each other; the US would be a good example of this, the US has continued to provide global leadership for multilateral liberalization while simultaneously pursuing it’s regional initiatives. ” Foreign Affairs V75, n3 (May/June, 1996): 105-120.