Author: John Ravenhill, ANU

The proliferation of preferential trade agreements (PTA) in the Asia-Pacific region in the last decade has been primarily a top-down affair, driven by governments acting as much for political-strategic as for economic considerations.

The consequence has been a succession of poor quality, ‘trade-lite’, agreements, towards which the business community, the supposed beneficiary of such arrangements, has been largely indifferent. Read more…