Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
became evident at the time of the accomplishment of the internal market
in 1992. The main underlying motivations of the EU internal market were
in fact the rise of international competition, first from the US and Japan,
and then from the Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs) of East Asia
and elsewhere, and the consequent fears brought about by a winners/losers
outlook; the potential advantages offered by the win/win perspective con-
nected with new technological opportunities; and the belief that market
fragmentation at the national level was hampering economies of scale and
scope (RodrÃguez-Pose 2002).
The international climate at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of
the 1990s was indeed very favourable to launching or expanding trade
blocs, the result of which was the establishment of NAFTA between the
US, Mexico and Canada in 1994, of Mercosur between Brazil, Argentina,
Uruguay and Paraguay in 1991, and the very slow but real integration of
the economies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN),
which was started in 1967 but only really embarked on a process of engag-
ing economic collaboration in 1991. These institutional developments all
responded to a similar logic of promoting trade and investment to ration-
alize and restructure intra-area markets and resources, spur innovation,
and ultimately react to the competitive pressure coming from emerging
economies (Hufbauer and Findlay 1996; Hufbauer and Schott 2005;
Hufbauer and Brunel 2008).
Several other international organizations and institutional arrange-
ments at the global and continental scales were founded in this period
and were also aimed at liberalizing and supervising international trade
and investment. Among these, the World Trade Organisation (WTO),
which was established in 1995 as a replacement of the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) which had been founded in 1947, is the
only really global free trade organization in terms of number of members
(153 countries, with some 30 observers potentially future members) and
representing more than 97 per cent of total world trade.
4
The Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) was established in 1989 to enhance eco-
nomic growth and cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region through the
reduction of tariffs and other trade barriers and the encouragement of
investment across the area. APEC currently has 21 members including the
whole of NAFTA as well as Japan and China, and accounts for approxi-
mately 40 per cent of the world's population, 54 per cent of world GDP
and 44 per cent of world trade.
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On a much smaller scale there is also the
Closer Economic Relations (CER) agreement between Australia and New
Zealand which was originally established in 1983 and achieved one of its
most significant outcomes in 1990, with the almost total elimination of all
tariffs and quantitative barriers to trade between the two countries.
