Brookings Mountain West presents “Mega-regional Free Trade Agreements – is the U.S. gambling with the Global Trading System” a talk by Joshua Meltzer, Fellow, Global Economy and Development.

This lecture will discuss the impact of the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations on U.S. economic competitiveness and leadership in Asia and Europe. This will lead into a discussion of large Free Trade Areas (FTA), or groups of countries that have few or no price controls in the form of tariffs or quotas between each other. FTAs allow the agreeing nations to focus on their comparative advantages and to produce the goods they are comparatively more efficient at making, thus increasing the efficiency and profitability of each country. We will explore the impact of FTAs on the World Trade Organization – whether they create a pathway towards a new global consensus on trade or will lead to the creation of competing trade blocs.