India Should Join Asia’s New Free‐​Trade Area

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After seven years of negotiations, India has backed out of joining the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a Free Trade Area (FTA) that was to include 16 countries—including China, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and India—and would cover 40 percent of global gross domestic product and over half the world population. In a new paper, Cato scholar Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar argues that India needs to avoid the temptations of protectionism and opt instead for reforms that make it more competitive.

    Post‐​Brexit Priorities: a U.S.-U.K. Free Trade Agreement

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    With the United Kingdom poised to reclaim control of its trade policy for the first time in 47 years, it’s worth sharing some preliminary thoughts about an eventual free trade agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom. According to Cato scholars Simon Lester and Daniel J. Ikenson, an eventual U.S.-UK FTA should remove barriers to trade in goods and services, open up all sectors of the both economies to investment, and, ultimately, go as far as possible to remove all administrative impediments to economic integration without encroaching on the sovereignty of governments to pass laws and regulate in the public interest in ways that do not discriminate against foreign goods, services, and companies.

    Trade Justice Delayed Is Trade Justice Denied: How to Make WTO Dispute Settlement Faster and More Effective

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    Until recently, the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement process had served as a beacon of hope for being one of the fastest and most effective international dispute settlement systems in the history of the world. Today, with the process so much slower, governments can have a three‐​year or longer “free pass” to implement illegal protectionist measures while litigation drags on. A new brief by Cato scholars James Bacchus and Simon Lester proposes reforms to speed up the process.

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