ANALYSIS OF JAPAN’S EXISTING AND FORTHCOMING FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS IN THE ASIA – PACIFIC AND GLOBAL CONTEXT

The paper analyzes the rise of interest for free trade agreements and economic cooperation agreements following the failure of Doha Round and the different impact of the economic crisis on various countries and regions, focusing on the participation of Japan to such agreements. Given the high economic dynamism of the Asia – Pacific area the interest for finding operational solutions for trade facilitation is even higher than in other parts of the world economy. More initiatives that aim at supporting trade and cooperation among the countries in the area are under way and they contribute in various forms to the economic integration of the participants. The conclusion of the paper is that the current trend towards free trade agreements does not represent a dispute between multilateralism and bilateralism in international trade but an imperfect quick fix for something too important to be postponed (that is the regulation of international trade). In our opinion is that despite a certain level of duplication of efforts these initiatives represent in fact building blocks for a future multilateral framework with global scope.