Our professional team provides timely and effective advice on the appropriate solutions to navigate the complex web of regional trade agreements that often present challenges for companies involved in cross-border transactions. Regional trade agreements (RTAs) have proliferated over the past decade around the world to cover more than half of global trade.
In addition to market access of goods, many RTAs include provisions in areas such as services, investment, technical barriers to trade, phyto-sanitary standards, intellectual property, and competition rules, as well as issues related to the environment and trade in environment- friendly products and services. The many legal rules contained in RTAs often produce policy frictions that increase the costs of trading. Each new RTA rule represents a new policy for firms to consider in their export, outsourcing, and investment decisions.
The differences in rules across RTAs often increase transaction costs to countries and firms operating on several RTA regimes simultaneously. This is of increasing concern to firms since nearly all WTO members are party to at least one RTA. Therefore, regional trade agreements although intended to liberalize trade often result in increased transactional costs for firms not only because of different rules in these agreements that affect firms but also because international transactions will most often include different rules covering a variety of regional trade agreements covering one transaction.
At SAMUEL BECKFORD we dissect and simplify the process for the most effective solutions to cross border transactions covering several regional trade agreements to facilitate our individual client’s needs whether for market access generally, to ensure compliance with applicable rules to secure the benefits of trading, provide advice on overlapping dispute settlement provisions in RTAs and the appropriate forum for dispute settlement.