ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the development of regional trade agreements (RTAs) beside GATT/WTO, highlighting certain notable features of their development. The focus of the chapter is on the context in which the ‘super’ RTAs have emerged and been negotiated. It concludes that the rapid and substantive development of RTAs, often with a geopolitical approach, may well undermine the liberal economic order as the foundation of GATT/WTO, and significantly fracture the supposedly ‘the only’ global regulatory regime and, as such, seriously undermine multilateralism.
