Research On WTO’s Restrictive And Review Mechanism Of RTAs

After 14 years of China’s participating in WTO and Doha-round, the WTO multilateral trade negotiations stuck into the dilemma of being marginalized. Regional trade agreements(RTAs), however, lead a vigorously growing tendency. Firstly, this paper analyzes the fast-growing situation of RTAs and its causes, which specifically include the drawbacks of WTO itself, and 7 political economic motivations for RTAs.Secondly, this paper introduces RTAs as stumbling blocks of WTO multilateralism. As a result, it is of great necessity for WTO’s legal system to regulate RTAs. By analyzing the GATT XXIV and the enabling clause’s differences in internal trade requirements,transparency mechanism as well as non-reciprocity features, this paper suggests different conditions and precautions of RTAs under three legal basis. Last but no least,we propose alternative suggestions of WTO economic type’s “self-selection” criterion in order to fulfill the need of constructing and notifying RTAs under relative legal basis.