One of the motivations for these standards is the fear that unconditional trade could lead to a „race to the bottom“ in terms of labour and environmental standards, given that multinationals are singing the globe in search of low wages and lax environmental rules in order to reduce costs. Yet there is no empirical evidence of such a breed. In fact, trade usually involves the transfer of technology to developing countries, which makes it possible to increase wage rates, as the Korean economy – among many others – has shown since the 1960s. In addition, increased revenues are allowing cleaner production technologies to become affordable. For example, replacing scooters produced in India with scooters imported from Japan to India would improve air quality in India. These agreements between three or more countries are the most difficult to negotiate. The larger the number of participants, the more difficult the negotiations. They are inherently more complex than bilateral agreements, with each country having its own needs and wishes. A certain prognosis is that international trade agreements will continue to be controversial. Critics of bilateral and regional approaches to trade liberalization have many additional arguments. They indicate that these approaches could undermine and replace the WTO`s multilateral approach, which should be favoured for a comprehensive approach based on a non-discriminatory approach, instead of 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 complicates the fluidity of goods flows between countries. Moreover, the reform of issues such as agricultural export subsidies cannot be effectively addressed at the bilateral or regional level. A multilateral treaty establishes guidelines setting the minimum and maximum purchase prices, so that importers have an indication of guaranteed purchase quantities and producer countries know what guaranteed quantities they will sell to importers. This makes multilateral agreements unpopular. Multilateral agreements are difficult to implement. Another problem in multilateral agreements is that other countries are attacking the United States and imposing requirements that harm the United States. Second, the multilateral removal of trade barriers can reduce political opposition to free trade in each of the countries concerned. This is because groups that otherwise oppose trade reforms or would be indifferent could join the campaign for free trade if they saw opportunities to export to other countries in the trade deal. Therefore, free trade agreements between countries or regions are a useful strategy for the liberalization of world trade. The third advantage is that it standardizes trade rules for all trading partners. Companies save legal fees because they follow the same rules for each country. Some countries, such as Britain in the nineteenth century and Chile and China in recent decades, have made unilateral tariff cuts – reductions made independently and without any reciprocal action by other countries.

The advantage of unilateral free trade is that a country can immediately reap the benefits of free trade. Countries that remove trade barriers themselves do not need to postpone reforms as they try to convince other nations to follow suit. The benefits of such trade liberalization are considerable: several studies have shown that incomes rise faster in countries open to international trade than in countries more closed to trade. . . .