The Rise of Global Supply Chains and Increasing Importance of Bilateral Agreements in Foreign Trade Policy

The main aim of the article is indication of the rise global supply chains and increasing importance of
bilateral agreements in the foreign trade policy. The subject of the discussion and theoretical
contribution in the undertaken research program is presents new tendencies in international business
- the rise of global supply chains, the impact of the rise global supply chains on the political economy
of trade and countries motivations for cooperating on trade policies and the rise of global supply
chains and increasing importance of bilateral agreements in the foreign trade policy. It is important to
underline that a few multinational firms are responsible for a major share of world trade and for the
rise of global supply chains. On the one hand, these firms should support regulatory harmonization
across different Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) in order to lower trade costs. On the other
hand, they might also resist harmonization – and encourage certain non-tariff measures – in order to
prevent new competitors from entering markets. This may partly explain the persistence of regulatory
divergence, and suggests that the political economy of regulatory convergence, especially in the
conditions of the rise global supply chains, may be more complex than is sometimes suggested.