Regional Initiatives and US Trade Policy in Asia

This article gives an account of US trade policy towards Asia, with particular reference to regional preferential trading agreements. The outcome of fifteen years of US pursuit of regional trade policies could possibly be a network of preferential trade arrangements centred around the USA; a more likely outcome is an increasingly strengthened multilateral system based on the World Trade Organisation (WTO). A stronger WTO may prove capable of constraining even its most powerful members. This outcome is certainly in the long-term interest of the USA.