The Free Trade Epidemic of the 1860S and Other Outbreaks of Economic Discrimination

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have become an increasingly prominent feature of the international trade environment, with salient examples being the widening and deepening of the European Union (EU), the success of the Mercosur, and the formation of the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA). In fact, a majority of the active agreements notified to gatt through 1995 were signed in the 1990s. 1 This systemic change, involving most of the states of the world but managed by none, echoes a period of even more dramatic change in the trade policies of the world's economies: the 1860s.