Developing countries have subsequently become more active but ...

 .  THE TRADE POLICYMAKING CHALLENGE There are several respects in which trade policymaking today is a more important and difficult field of...

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 THE TRADE POLICYMAKING CHALLENGE There are several respects in which trade policymaking today is a more important and difficult field of public policy than it once had been. First, trade as traditionally defined now comprises a larger part of most countries’ economies. The process of globalization has linked rising shares of output, consumption, and employment to imports, exports, and foreign direct investment, a fact that holds true for countries at all levels of income and development. Trade negotiations have grown in number and scope over the past few decades; they now cover a much wider range of issues than before and take place simultaneously at the multilateral and the regional levels. Matters are made even more complex by the fact that developing countries are now expected to bear a greater share of the burden in the international trading system. Gone are the days when most developing countries were not contracting parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), many of those that were in the Agreement opted not to engage seriously in negotiations or to adopt most GATT agreements, and trade relations with industrialized countries were typically based on one-way preferences granted by developed countries. 

Developing countries have subsequently become more active and significant players in the multilateral system, with nearly all of them joining the Agreement and then the World Trade Organization (WTO), and most are also engaged in at least one free trade agreement, customs union, or other form of regional trade arrangement (RTA). Some of them still restrict their regional negotiations to pacts with their immediate neighbours, but others opt to negotiate RTAs with one or more of the major industrialized countries. The question most countries face is no longer whether they will open and integrate their economies, but at what pace and in what way. Countries must decide what form of trade agreements they will choose to negotiate, what terms they will seek in these agreements, how far they will go towards the reduction or elimination of tariffs and other restrictions on trade and investment, and what domestic reforms they will adopt — either autonomously or in order to keep the commitments that they make in trade agreements — as complements to their marketopening initiatives.