Data on trade between England and Africa during the period 1699-1808 are available on Dutch data archiving and network services. It was prepared by Marion Johnson. Critics of bilateral and regional approaches to trade liberalization have many additional arguments. They propose that these approaches undermine and supplant the MULTILATERAL approach of the WTO, which must be favoured for global use on a non-discriminatory basis, rather than supporting and complementing it. Therefore, the long-term outcome of bilateralism could be a deterioration of the global trading system into competing and discriminatory regional trading blocs, which could lead to additional complexity that complicates the flow of goods between countries. In addition, the reform of issues such as agricultural export subsidies cannot be effectively addressed at the bilateral or regional level. Europe (overall) is considered in the source as the “best estimate of the overall rate between European trade and GDP”. Mercantilist trade policy has discouraged trade agreements between nations. This is because governments have supported local industry by applying tariffs and quotas to imports, as well as by prohibiting the export of tools, capitalization, skilled labour or anything that could help foreign countries compete with domestic production of industrial products. Since Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776, the vast majority of economists have accepted the thesis that free trade between nations improves overall economic well-being. Free trade, generally defined as the absence of tariffs, quotas or other government barriers to international trade, allows each country to specialize in products that it can produce cheaply and efficiently compared to other countries.

Such specialization allows all countries to earn higher real incomes. International trade has grown remarkably in recent centuries As in the United States, the country has never participated in the trade liberalization that swept Europe in the first half of the 19th century. But in the second half of the century, protectionism grew considerably with the increase in tariffs during the Civil War, and then the mcKinley ultra-protectionist tariff law of 1890. The global distribution of powers has changed again since the creation of the US-dominated WTO. Not surprisingly, the European Union is now an economic superpower. (12) However, it does not have a single army and its member states are also part of the US-dominated NATO Security Treaty. (13) Therefore, the EU is not a direct candidate on the question of whether it should become a new global hegemon. However, the rise of the BRICS countries, particularly China, has profoundly changed the order of international trade.

In recent years, there has been an explosion of bilateral and regional free trade agreements. As the Global South and other developing countries have begun to make their voices heard in the WTO and have stopped simply approving what the industrialized countries are proposing, the negotiations have moved from the multilateral approach to more interest-based talks. Overall, world trade is more interconnected and power has become more pluralistic. As a result, many countries have shifted from the multilateral process to bilateral or regional trade agreements.