Preferential trade agreements, externalities, and domestic policy

As multilateral trade barriers fall, there are increasing concerns that domestic policies will be used to undermine tariff cooperation. We examine how the ability to use domestic instruments affects the formation of trade agreements, and the resulting implications for the pursuit of free trade. We examine how optimal tariffs relate to domestic policy choices, and how negotiated restrictions on trade policy affect both domestic policies and the incentives to enter different trade agreements. We show that unrestricted domestic policy can lead to very different equilibrium trade agreements than with exogenous domestic policy.