ABSTRACT
Professor Baldwin’s chapter offers a wide perspective on the current stage of trade disputes where agricultural trade negotiations play such a crucial role. Professor Baldwin stresses that, while the United States and Europe share a mutual interest in the strengthening of a multilateral trading system, they are also facing the risk that the current trend towards regional trade agreements may push in the opposite direction by breaking the global system into conflicting blocs. He also reminds us that the establishment of a multilateral regime is made more difficult by the fact that we are no longer in a situation of hegemony, i.e., a situation in which the cost of providing international public goods (of which an international trade regime is a major example) is more than proportionally borne by the larger and most powerful state.
