ABSTRACT
A free trade agreement is an undertaking by signatory parties (e.g. countries) to remove the barriers of trade between them. These agreements can vary significantly in terms of the number of signatory parties involved, their technical policy content, their ideological foundations, the balance of preferences conferred amongst signatory parties, and so on. They have also been a feature of the international economic system for some time. The first period of rapid FTA growth occurred over 1860-1914, which saw a deepening of internationalised business and economic activity generally and is often referred to as the ‘proto-globalisation’ era. The most recent period of intensified FTA activity occurred from the early 1990s onwards, the end of the Cold War and ‘contemporary’ globalisation being the main instrumental factors behind this trend. In 1990 there were only 16 fully operative FTAs that had been notified to the WTO’s predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. By 1997 this number had increased to 72, and by 2005 to 153, most of these (around 90 per cent) being bilateral in nature (Table 6.1).
