亞ㆍ太貿易自由化의 課題와 展望

Regional trade Liberalization in the Asia-Pacific: Policy Choices and Prospects

With the Uruguay Round finally concluded, there is a growing demand to carefully reexamine the goal and effectiveness of the Asia-Pacific economic cooperation. In particular, regional trade liberalization in the Asia-Pacific(hereafter RTL) is expected to become a focus of debate for the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) Ministerial Meeting. In the short-run, it would be difficult for APEC countries to agree to full-fledged trade liberalization because of the vast differences in their development levels and trade policy schemes. In the long-run, however, RTL will be indispensible for the promotion of regional economic integration. This paper aims to clarify key concepts central to RTL, as well as to provide a workable blueprint. It focuses on three basic issues for RTL pursuing trade liberalization complementary to the UR, building up a foundation for the vitalization of trade, and harmonizing member countries’ viewpoints towards emerging new trade issues. The paper recommends that RTL should begin with a few selected areas, i.e., direct foreign investment, standards and harmonization, surveillance of subregional trading blocs, for which efforts at policy coordination seem reltively easy to draw. The prospect for issues related to market access, such as tariff reductions, is quite different owing to the conflict of interest between advanced and developing countries in the region. In a similar context, the ratcheting up of multilateral trade liberalization is outside the scope of RTL. Another key issue pertaining to RTL concerns extending it to outsiders. There are two or three alternatives in dealing with the “most favored nation(MFN)” principle So-called “open regionalism” based on the unconditional MFN treatment of outsiders is critically weakened by the free-rider problem. In a world with protectionist economic blocs, the unilateral approach to trade liberalization may make member countries worse off. Meanwhile, the idea of forming an Asia-Pacific free trade area as advocated by the NAFTA countries is hardly acceptable by Asian developing countries, at least in the foreseeable future. Thus, the conditional MFN approach to RTL would be the only viable option. A separate regional code will be necessary for its implementation. An analysis of impact price effects and dynamic growth effects of RTL implies long-run benefits of trade liberalization on the Korean economy. If the possibility of RTL’s failure is taken into account, the overall positive effects of RTL far outweigh the negative. However, some caution is necessary in the case of rapid trade liberalization, since Korea’s current market opening is lagging far behind those of advanced countries. In sum, Korea’s policy choice should be a gradual and selective approach to RTL, placing top priority on the principle of multilateralism.