Regional Trade Agreements, Prosperity and the Global South:

Normative Beliefs and Interests,

Authored by Yenkong Ngangjoh Hodu and Collins Chikodili Ajibo

(Cambridge University Press, 2025), ISBN 9781009348546

by Swati Gola and Adv. Nisha Bhaskar

 

Do Regional Trade Agreements Engender Prosperity?

 

The regional trade agreements (RTA)1 boom is the most important trade law development since the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO).2 Developed within the legal framework of Article XXIV of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994, Article V of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (on ‘Economic Integration’), paragraph 2(c) of the Enabling Clause and the Transparency Mechanism for Regional Trade Agreements, RTAs have become a key trade policy feature for all WTO members, so much so that all WTO members now have at least one RTA in force.3 While RTAs have always co-existed with the multilateral trading system, the ‘dual crisis,’ i.e., the deadlock at the Doha Development Agenda negotiations as well as the inoperability of the dispute settlement system,4 has made RTAs the default future of international trade. In comparison to the average of three RTA notifications during the GATT years, twenty-five RTAs on average have been notified per year since 1995.5 In 2019, there were 466 cumulative notifications of RTAs in force that increased to 602 by June 2026.6 The Doha negotiations not only failed to deliver on their ambitious promise, but also shed light on the diverging preferences of an ever expanding and diverse WTO membership.7 Moreover, regional projects are more feasible than global ones as it is more realistic for countries to find common interests at a regional rather than global level.