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Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
International trade; regional trade agreements; General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; defragmentation
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Defragmenting World Trade, Sungjoon Cho
Defragmenting World Trade, Sungjoon Cho
Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business
The global trading community is in a state of deep crisis. Its main system, multilateralism, has recently been clogged by viscous trade barriers created by a proliferation of bilateral, regional trading blocs. Globalization offers a worldwide "production value chain" which enables even small economies to take part in the global commerce by offering raw materials or labor. In fact, small economies hold a comparative advantage at certain stages of the international manufacturing process.1 However, the current pattern of regional trading blocs militates against such participation by erecting new barriers against non-members and thus compartmentalizing the global market.2 This is not …