ABSTRACT
International trade has served the world economy in many profitable ways. Many of the economies in the world have enjoyed rapidly increasing economic growth through promoting trade activities and developing more extensive trade patterns. However, the world economic order has seen the emergence of a new tendency, ‘regionalism’, which ‘discriminates’ in favour of intra-regionally-driven members and against non-members. Realising that discriminatory regionalism is a main cause of reduction in global welfare, the economies in the Asia-Pacific region came together to develop the idea of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).
