US Bilateral FTAs in West Asia : A Step Towards MEFTA

The concept of regionalism does not have clear cut and widely accepted definition as it is difficult to decide whether two or more territories fall in the same economic region. On the ground practice, the concept is defined largely in terms of non-geographic criteria and laying relatively little emphasis on physical location. Regionalism, the scholars commonly agree, is defined in non-geographic terms, focusing on preferential economic arrangements that does away with the composition of states in close proximity. Since most of the contemporary literature on regionalism focuses on Preferential Trading Arrangements (PTAs)1, hence this discussion uses concept of regionalism in the context of grouping of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) between the US and its West Asian partners into Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA) as claimed by the US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick. ‘Regionalism,' ‘regional trade agreement,' and ‘regional trade area' refer to the general terms that involve the commitment among a group of countries to achieve some degree of economic integration. In brief, an important objective of this paper is to investigate the so called hypothesis adopted for MEFTA, that is, whether the pursuit of bilateral trading arrangements between the US and its West Asian partners helps in the formation of MEFTA and whether the MEFTA initiative plays a positive role in increased intraregional trade or work against it