New Preferential Agreements in the Context of Global Fragmentation of International Trade: Challenges to Regulation in the Context of Asymmetric Interdependence

The purpose of this article is to analyze the modern trade landscape of global agreements, which will allow us to characterize the key features of the development of integration processes determined by economic factors. Preferential trade is characterized as an alternative option for the course of global liberalization of cross-border trade and the movement of financial flows, since this involves an artificial redistribution of resource-production complexes and a change in the competitiveness of its actors. The analysis showed that global trade is under pressure from geopolitical conflicts, which, in fact, destroy traditional approaches to international economic specialization, and therefore to the international division of labor, which in the near future will be formed by no means under the influence of rational arguments. The policy of decoupling, reforming, friendshoring, forced outsourcing against the background of the sanctioning effects of concluded contracts and even agreements is just one of the manifestations of the violent change in global value chains and supply chains. Four main mechanisms of influence of non-tariff barriers affecting the asymmetric nature of trade ties are noted: trade destruction; trade diversion; diversification of import sources: countries imposing restrictions increase imports from third countries; trade depression — a situation in which target countries reduce imports from third countries. The new generation of preferential trade agreements involves “deep integration” — comprehensive reforms not only of trade barriers, but also of domestic regulatory systems in the areas of food safety, customs administration, public procurement, competition policy and liberalization of services. The main challenges for preferential trade agreements are procedural challenges, country-specific challenges, policy-specific challenges, including: the complexity of coordination between different government agencies; weak institutional capacities, limited resources, lack of expertise; uncertainty about the optimal level of integration and regulatory convergence.