1 Introduction : reconstructing the world trading system

International trade has become an integrated part of our everyday lives. Many, if not all, of the foods we eat and the clothes we wear today are consequences of trade, one way or another. Not a single day passes without contemporary media covering several reports on world trade. During the past six decades of the modern trading system, the volume of world trade increased more than twenty times. During the same period, the average tariff rate on manufactured products in developed countries decreased from 40 percent to less than 4 percent. It appears that those rounds of trade negotiations for the past six decades have paid off. The typical pattern of conventional trade negotiations is reciprocal bargain. For example, Country A would cut its own tariffs on goods that Country B exports in return for the latter cutting its tariff on goods that the former exports. In other words, each country’s market opening, measured by tariff concession, was (and still is) the price that the country paid to gain its own market access to its trading partner. Indeed, political