Multilateralising regionalism: Spaghetti bowls as building blocs on the path to global free trade

This paper addresses the final steps to global free trade - what they might look like, what sort of political economy forces might drive them, and what the WTO might do to help. Two facts form the point of departure: (1) Regionalism is here to stay; world trade is regulated by a motley assortment of unilateral, bilateral and multilateral trade agreements; (2) this motley assortment is not the best way to organise world trade. Moving to global duty-free trade will require a multilateralisation of regionalism. This paper presents the political economy logic of trade liberalisation and uses it to structure a narrative of world trade liberalisation since 1947. The logic is then used to project the world tariff map in 2010, arguing that the pattern will be marked by fractals- fuzzy, leaky trade blocs made up of fuzzy, leaky sub-blocs (fuzzy since the proliferation of FTAs makes it impossible to draw sharp lines around the Big-3 trade blocs, and leaky since some FTAs create free trade 'canals' linking the Big-3 blocs). The paper then presents a novel political economy mechanism - spaghetti bowls as building blocs - whereby offshoring creates a force that encourages the multilateralisation of regionalism. Finally, the paper suggests three things the WTO might do to help multilateralise regionalism. © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.