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Regional Trade Agreements and U.S. Agriculture

by Mary E. Burfisher and Elizabeth A. Jones

Agricultural Economic Report No. (AER-771) 150 pp, November 1998

cover image Regional trade agreements (RTA's) have become a fixture in the global trade arena. Their advocates contend that RTA's can serve as building blocks for multilateral trade liberalization. Their opponents argue that these trade pacts will divert trade from more efficient nonmember producing countries. U.S. agriculture can benefit from participating in RTA's and may lose when it does not. Agriculture is the source of most potential U.S. gains from RTA's. While the United States, as a global trader with diverse trade partners, can gain potentially more from global free trade than from RTA's, many recent RTA's have been more comprehensive in their liberalization of agricultural trade than the Uruguay Round. A strong multilateral process can help ensure that RTA's are trade creating, rather than protectionist. (Please also see Regional Trade Agreements and U.S. Agriculture: An Overview).

Keywords: regional trade agreements, global trade, agricultural trade, multilateral trade, trade liberalization, Uruguay Round

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Last updated: Wednesday, January 30, 2013

For more information contact: Mary E. Burfisher and Elizabeth A. Jones