Preferential Trading Areas and Multilateralism: Strangers, Friends or Foes?

The question of Preferential Trading Areas, as we should call them in preference of the misleading phrase "Free Trade Areas" (and Customs Unions) which falsely equates them in the public mind and discourse with nonpreferential Free Trade, has never been distant from international economists' thoughts and concerns since the beginning of the postwar period when the architects of GATT had to confront them and accomodate them into the GATT via Article XXIV.