How to encourage network trade rules interconnections? an application to the case of non tariff barriers

The focus of this paper is different and is also a by-product of the globalization process. As the range of economic activities in the international economy expands, the themes that require necessary consideration in trade agreements also grow. The extension of the set of economic activities in the international economy provokes an extension of the themes that require necessary consideration in trade agreements. The adaptation speed in the multilateral field is structurally slow. Countries are less willing to establish rules on the basis of MFN than within PTAs. Hence the demands to expand and deepen in new topics have been channelled through the proliferation of preferential trade agreements. The content of commitments and themes in the agenda of international trade negotiations between national jurisdictions has widened: from the trade of goods to the trade of services, as well as to the mobility of some production factors. At the same time, the field where commitments are achieved has increased exponentially: bilateral agreements, plurilateral agreements, agreements between groups of countries, and the extension of agreements. For a diagnosis of what is happening, it is necessary to build a complex and large matrix of information that crosses the fields of commitment (columns of the matrix) with its issues or contents (“lines”).