ABSTRACT
Trade agreements are very popular: some 260 regional trade agreements have been notified to the World Trade Organization (WTO).1 And grand claims (both positive and negative) are made about their impact on economic development. It is widely assumed that they will result in increased trade: a typical example of this is the European Commission’s very precise forecast that over a period of ten years the European Union (EU)-Singapore free trade agreement (FTA) would result in a 3.6 per cent increase in Europe’s exports to Singapore and a 10.4 per cent rise in its imports.2 Some claims are also made about broader development impacts. One forecast about the Norway-China FTA was that it might result in ‘win-win’ (trade and environment) and ‘win-win-win’ (trade, environment, development) opportunities and avoid environmentally harmful consequences of commitments.3 But the opposite is also claimed: a bleak (and also suspiciously precise) forecast about the US-Colombia FTA argued that its impact on the Colombian small farm sector would be critical for the 28 per cent of small-scale producers (whose total income would fall by up to 45 per cent) and serious for 13 per cent of producers (whose total income would fall by 16 per cent).4
