Regionalism is commonly understood to be just another word for the exclusive exchange of market access rights among a limited number of trading partners. In fact, preferential trade agreements (PTAs) of this kind were typically concluded within fairly well-defi ned geographical areas such as Europe, North America and parts of Latin America, Africa and Asia-Pacifi c. They involve “positive” discrimination in favour of adjacent countries and in many cases “negative” discrimination against more distant trading partners, in particular through the imposition of antidumping measures.
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