ABSTRACT
The overarching official objective of the WTO is ‘to help trade flow smoothly, freely, fairly and predictably’.1 Since the inauguration of the multilateral trading system in 1947, trade has grown rapidly – although perhaps not always predictably – in the Asia Pacific. Over the last quarter-century, exports from the developing countries of East Asia alone have grown at a rate of 13 per cent per year, fast enough to raise their share of global exports from 3.4 per cent to 10.5 per cent. However, as Rose (2004a) has reminded us so forcefully, correlation is not causation, and careful analysis is needed to assess the extent to which the multilateral trading system has contributed to this felicitous outcome, and to the region’s economic growth more broadly.
