WEB-ресурс научно-практических конференций

Мусієнко С.В.

Київський національний економічний університет ім.. Вадима Гетьмана

TRADE POLICIES IN THE EPOCH OF GLOBALIZATION: UPCOMING CHALLENGES, PARTNERSHIP AND REGIONAL INEQUALITIES

Nobody would deny that growth of international trade over the past several decades has been caused by the effect of globalization. Since 1950 volumes of world trade have increased from $320 billion to $6.8 trillion. Increase in the trade of manufactured goods three times exceeds rates of their production.

Even though increased international trade has encouraged tremendous economic growth around the world— such as higher incomes, new jobs, prices reduction, and increasing workers’ earning power — it can also bring new challenges, which would concern economic, political, and social spheres and which can’t be solved within a country, as it is the question of international cooperation.

Thus international and global institutions are working out mechanisms to help manage the ever-growing flow of goods, services, and capital.

Notwithstanding the fact that trade liberalization brings so many advantages, it also increases regional inequalities. Least developed countries can’t promote their products at the global market and they don’t have enough mechanisms to protect their markets from high-quality import, coming from developed countries.

Growing influence of such regional trade agreements as the European Union, NAFTA, APEC and MERCOSUR warns about the appropriate partition of responsibilities between these regional agreements and the global institutions(such as WTO, OECD), and can’t guarantee that rival regulatory policies at the regional level will not affect trade liberalization, by creating new trade barriers and market inequalities .

Consequently, setting regional blocks, on one hand, liberalizes trade flows, and mean while, on the other hand, implementation of trade privileges between members of this block, allow them to concentrate their trading activity within the trade new trade region and carry out more rigid inter-regional trade policy.

Trade flows inside regions explain a higher share of world trade than flows between regions. Since 2000, this share has fluctuated from between 55 to 58%. Great differences have been noticed in the growth of trade inside regions:

- North America and Asia demonstrate quite balanced growth between inter- and intra-regional trade;

- Europe ’s intra-trade is growing much faster than its external trade. It can be explained by intensive economic integration in this region while South and Central America , Africa , the Middle East and the CIS have showed higher growth in inter-regional exports dominating.

Effectiveness of intra-regional trade functioning depends on its members' general level of economic development: if the economic level of countries-members are relatively similar, than their economic cooperation will be based on equal possibilities and they will have good chances for getting mutually advantageous trade relations.

EU's pattern demonstrates the example of the most successful regional integration, though now it actively struggles with economic disproportion between new members(especially Latvia , Lithuania , Estonia, Bulgaria , Romania ) and older ones [3] .

The main key of EU's successful activity is provided with its policy of economic balancing and EU Structural Funds' activity. Well-balanced enlargement policy give new member states multi-beneficiary transition programs, which allow them to adopt their economic policies in accordance with EU 's legislation and adapt their markets for new challenges [4] .

However, as trade with countries outside NAFTA’s region has been growing faster than intra-NAFTA trade. Members of this regional block – USA , Canada and Mexico – have different level of economic development. The asymmetric character NAFTA determines different and somehow controversial purposes of its members. Each of the member is carrying out own trade policy. NAFTA can be regarded as USA 's "answer" to integrated Europe .

Taking into consideration WTO principles and their protectionism imperceptions, countries do hide market protective mechanisms, explaining limitation of their markets liberalization by inequality of trade opportunities, globalization threats and unfair competition.

Trade Policy Review Body of WTO examines the impact of each contracting party's trade policies and practices on the multilateral trading system. It enables the WTO Members collectively to assess and monitor all aspects of their trade policies and practices, enhancing transparency in the multilateral trading system [5] .

Four largest market trading entities?USA, EU, Canada and Japan ? are subject to review their trade policies every two years, for least-developed countries review intervals may be longer.

Nevertheless, in term of trade liberalization and meeting of G20 EU 's representatives have officially declared that figures for 2009 and 2010 will decide whether Europe meets its target for Official Development Assistance (ODA) of 0.56% of Gross National Income (GNI) by 2010, but development aid will not be enough on its own to help developing countries overcome economic crisis, though maybe it would be one the basic steps for solving the problem of inequality [4] .

In view of globalization and new challenges of world economic system, the impact of international and global regulatory institutions grows; however, it always starts from the national level. It is obvious that trade policy of any country should correspond to such requirements as:

· transparency and understanding of countries’ trade policies and practices;

· adherence to the non-discrimination principle when designing and implementing measures to promote economic recovery;

· creating equal trading opportunities and making cooperation between countries mutually beneficial.

Trying to defend one's economic interests, each country should search for the best way, completely meeting its requirements and promoting realization of chosen trade, industry and investment policy . Only observance of WTO's basic principles can guarantee transparent trade policies, creating equal trading opportunities and making cooperation between countries mutually advantageous.

Information resources :

1. Міжнародна інформаційна мережа London Summit 2009. ? http :// www . londonsummit . gov . uk / en / summit - aims / timeline - events / business - leaders -2 ;

2. Міжнародна інформаційна мережа M organ Stanley . ? http :// www . morganstanley . com / views / gef / archive /2007/20070126- Fri . html ;

3. Офіційний сайт Європейського Союзу. G ateaway to the European Union .? http :// europa . eu / abc / history /2000_ today / index _ en . htm ;

4. Офіційний сайт Комісії Європейського Союзу. European Commission ' s Web server .? http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/09/177&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en ;

5. Офіційний сайт Світової організації торгівлі . The WTO and developing countries . ? http://www.inquit.com/iqebooks/WTODC/Webversion/prov/ninteen.htm ;

6. Козак Ю.Г., Лук’яненко Д.Г., Макогон Ю.В. Міжнародна економіка: Підручник для студ . вищ . навч.закл . – 3-тє вид. – К.: Центр учбової літератури, 2009. - С.74-82;

7. Baldwin Richard, Evenett Simon. The collapse of global trade, murky protectionism, and the crisis: Recommendations for the G20// UK , London : Centre for Economic Policy Research 2009 . — 115 p.