摘要：Regional trade agreements (RTA's) have become a fixture in the global trade arena.Their advocates contend that RTA's can serve as building blocks for multilateraltrade liberalization. Their opponents argue that these trade pacts will divert tradefrom more efficient nonmember producing countries. U.S. agriculture can benefitfrom participating in RTA's and may lose when it does not. Agriculture is animportant source of potential U.S. gains from RTA's. While the United States, as aglobal trader with diverse trade partners, can gain potentially more from globalfree trade than from RTA's, many recent RTA's have been more comprehensive intheir liberalization of agricultural trade liberalization than the Uruguay Round. Astrong multilateral process can help ensure that RTA's are trade creating, ratherthan protectionist.
