The Rush to Bilateral Pacts: Throttling Trade While Trying to Promote It

Rhetoric to the contrary, the latest move by ASEAN’s economic ministers to speed up trade among its 10 members may well be nothing more than one more strand in a confused noodle bowl of East Asian trade pacts with the potential to strangle rather than liberate regional trade.

At stake is a global trading regime that, virtually since World War II, has con…