This Paper presents a survey of the literature on trade liberalization and globalization. The questions are why trade liberalization occurred, why trade liberalization took the form of reciprocity combined with multilateralism, why the liberalization allows for protectionist policies, and why...

This paper argues that the growing US trade de.cit has caused the decline of the WTO and the rise of regional trade agreements. A country in de.cit prefers to retain market power against countries with a large surplus. Multilateral cooperation restricts its choice. This notion is formalized in a...