question: Why do trade agreements between countries need to be so complicated and all-encompassing?
comment: Trade deals involve a lot of give and take and all of the topics are related. Country A might want Country B to reduce the tariffs on corn but Country B wants Country A to reduce tariffs on cars. In this very simple scenario they can come to a compromise by agreeing to reduce both tariffs at the same time. Now, multiply this by the hundreds of thousands of goods and it gets really complicated really fast. You can't do a small agreement for each item because they all need to be balanced against each other.
passages: In this way, many countries have been resorting to bilateral and multilateral FTAs as a faster and more flexible way to promote free trades and globalization. Indeed, FTAs require only the consent of a limited number of like-minded countries, as opposed to the general consent of all WTO members necessary to conclude a negotiation round. Such agreements also allow countries to tackle broader issues such as bilateral investments, labor migration and regulations. As a result, the numbers of FTAs in force and in negotiations have exploded since the mid-1990s, passing from 100 agreements in 1990 to more than 400 in 2008.
   There are three different types of trade agreements. The first is "unilateral" trade agreement, this is what happens when a country wants certain restrictions to be enforced but no other countries want them to be imposed. This also allows countries to decrease the amount of trade restrictions. That is also something that does not happen often and could impair a country.
   BULLET::::1. Traders and potential traders must know about an agreement and its details, however, the interests and skills of good producers lie in production and not in legal rules, only the largest firms can afford policy advisers.
  
  BULLET::::2. Markets and suppliers must share information - producer associations, industrial organisations, and chambers of commerce exchange information among their members and this information exchange must then take place across borders (as seen between Brazil and Argentina after Mercosur).
  
  BULLET::::3. A successful agreement must be flexible and governments need to accept that it will need to evolve.
   Whether a measure is a technical regulation as opposed to a standard centers on whether it is "mandatory."
   The EEC accordingly argued for an evening-out or harmonization of peaks and troughs through its cerement, double cart and thirty: ten proposals. Once negotiations had been joined, the lofty working hypothesis was soon undermined. The special-structure countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa), so called because their exports were dominated by raw materials and other primary commodities, negotiated their tariff reductions entirely through the item-by-item method.
   Disputes between governments in relation to the design and implementation of trade measures: A key role of the WTO in international commercial law is the dispute settlement mechanism for trade disputes. The DSU provides a comprehensive set of rules and procedures to implement each party’s obligations under the WTO Agreement, either in isolation or in combination with an agreement between parties. Another important feature is the WTO TPRM which examines a member’s trading policies to determine whether they have potential adverse effects on other member states.
  
  Section::::International trade fraud.
   In sum, recent developments have made the system increasingly complex and diverse. Moreover, even to the extent that the principal components of IIAs are similar across most of the agreements, substantial divergences can be found in the details of these provisions. All of this makes managing the interaction among IIAs increasingly challenging for countries, particularly those in the developing world, and also complicates the negotiation of new agreements.
   Section::::History.:The Istanbul Convention.
  
  Between 1950 and 1970, there was a proliferation in the number of international Conventions, Recommendations, Agreements and other instruments on temporary admission, creating confusion for the international business community and complicating the work of Customs. In the early 1990s the WCO decided to take draft a worldwide Convention on temporary admission to combine, into a single international instrument, 13 existing temporary admission agreements, namely:
  
  BULLET::::1. Customs Convention on the ATA carnet for the temporary admission of goods (ATA Convention), Brussels, 6 December 1961
   Under Article 14.1 disputes regarding the TBT Agreement are to be resolved by the Dispute Settlement Body in accordance with Articles XXII and XXIII of GATT. This requires parties to undergo the same consultation process as they would for issues arising under GATT and allows disputes involving issues arising under both the TBT Agreement and GATT to be resolved simultaneously. In spite of this very few cases concerning the TBT Agreement have been brought to the Panel.
  
  The following list is an overview of the mechanisms that promote the TBT's mission: 
   The idea of these agreements ( WTO and GATT was to create an equal field for all countries in trade. This way all countries got something of equal value out of the trade. This was a difficult thing to do since every country has a different economy size. This led to the Trade Expansion act of 1962.
  
  Section::::Principles of International Trade Laws.
   Section::::Scope of application.
  
  According to Art.1, this agreement covers all industrial and agricultural products, with the exception of services, sanitary and phytosanitary measures (as defined by Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures) and "purchasing specifications prepared by governmental bodies for production or consumption requirements of governmental bodies" (Art. 1.4).
  
  The scope of the TBT consists of substantive scope (what measures are included), personal scope (to whom the measures apply), and temporal scope.
  
  Section::::Scope of application.:Substantive scope.
   Georgetown University Professor Marc L. Busch and McGill University Professor Krzysztof J. Pelc note that modern trade deals are long and complex because they often tackle non-tariff barriers to trade, such as different standards and regulations, in addition to tariffs. Due to steadily decreasing tariff barriers since World War II, countries have become increasingly likely to enact trade barriers in the form of non-tariff barriers. National firms often lobby their own governments to enact regulations that are designed to keep out foreign firms, and modern trade deals are one way to do away with such regulations.
   Most industrial countries have export controls on certain types of designated dual-use technologies, and they are required by a number of treaties as well. These controls restrict the export of certain commodities and technologies without the permission of the government. The principal agency for investigating violations of dual use export controls in the United States is the Bureau of Industry and Security, Office of Export Enforcement. Interagency coordination of export control cases are conducted through the Export Enforcement Coordination Center (E2C2).
   The main advantages of the PCT procedure, also referred to as the international procedure, are the possibility to maximally delay: (a) the national or regional procedures; (b) the respective fees and translation costs; and, (c) the unified filing procedure. From a practical standpoint, this could allow new ventures more time to locate strategic partnerships, funding, and markets, before their technology becomes public.
   The logic of formal trade agreements is that they outline what is agreed upon and the punishments for deviation from the rules set in the agreement. Trade agreements therefore make misunderstandings less likely, and create confidence on both sides that cheating will be punished; this increases the likelihood of long-term cooperation. An international organization, such as the IMF, can further incentivize cooperation by monitoring compliance with agreements and reporting third countries of the violations. Monitoring by international agencies may be needed to detect non-tariff barriers, which are disguised attempts at creating trade barriers.
   Trade facilitation
  
  Trade facilitation looks at how procedures and controls governing the movement of goods across national borders can be improved to reduce associated cost burdens and maximise efficiency while safeguarding legitimate regulatory objectives. Business costs may be a direct function of collecting information and submitting declarations or an indirect consequence of border checks in the form of delays and associated time penalties, forgone business opportunities and reduced competitiveness
   Section::::The participation of NGOs.:Demonstrations.:14 December 2005.
   The TBT Agreement also obliges States to notify each other of proposed technical barriers to trade. To give States the opportunity to raise their concerns before the measures come into force, members must allow reasonable time for Members to make comments, discuss their comments and to have their comments considered. Members must notify each other in relation to proposed TBT provisions when the following three conditions are satisfied: 
  
  BULLET::::- The measure must be a technical regulation or an evaluation of a conformity assessment procedure.
   A trade agreement signed between more than two sides (typically neighboring or in the same region) is classified as "multilateral". this one is the hardest to work out. Usually involves three or more countries. With the more countries that are involved it's definitely harder to negotiate. They are also more difficult to deal with because each country has their own set of things that they need and or want. Once this type of trade agreement is settled on it becomes a very powerful agreement. It covers a bigger area of the world. The largest multilateral trade agreement is the North American Free Trade Agreement between United States, Canada, and Mexico are the three countries involved in.
   The TBT Agreement can be divided into five parts. The first part defines the scope of the Agreement which includes "[a]ll products, including industrial and agricultural" but not sanitary and phytosanitary measures. The second part sets out the obligations and principles concerning technical regulations. The third part addresses conformity and assessments of conformity. The fourth part deals with information and assistance, including the obligation of nations to provide assistance to each other in drafting technical regulations. Lastly the fifth part provides for the creation of the Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade and sets out the dispute settlement procedures.
   Developments in international trade through e-commerce have seen an increased emphasis on IP protection. The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which replaces earlier international IP agreements, outlines rules to control anti-competitive practices in international licences relating to IP. TRIPS enables compliance disputes to be brought to attention of the WTO. Further it applies basic WTO principles to IP rights, such as the national treatment principle and the MFN principle.
  
  Section::::International commercial litigation and conflict of laws.
   Section::::Planning.:Finance.:Sponsorship.
   Similarly, it is based on these background that the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement requires members of the WTO to set minimum standards of legal protection, but its objective to have a “one-fits-all” protection law on Intellectual Property has been viewed with controversies regarding differences in the development level of countries. Despite the controversy, the agreement has extensively incorporated intellectual property rights into the global trading system for the first time in 1995, and has prevailed as the most comprehensive agreement reached by the world.
  
  Section::::Intellectual property rights.
   Members must ensure that technical regulations and standards do not accord treatments less favorable to imported products compared to the ones granted to like products of national origin or creating in any other country, as established respectively in Art. 2.1 and Annex 3.D. This principle applies also to conformity assessment procedures, that have to "grant access for suppliers of like products originating in the territories of other members under conditions no less favorable than those accorded to suppliers of like products of national origin or originating in any other country in a comparable situation" (Art. 5.1 and 5.1.1).
   When world trade began to expand dramatically in the 1960s, national governments began to realize the need for a global set of standards and rules to harmonize national and regional regulations, which until then 
  
  governed international trade.
  
  Section::::Membership.
  