Asia has enjoyed a surge in trade in proportion to its economic size, is increasingly involved in global supply chains and has turned to free trade agreements to pursue its trade agenda. The time has come to “multilateralize” those agreements, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy told a conference on “The Future of the World Trading System: Asian perspectives” on 11 March 2013.
The speech is available in its entirety on the World Trade Organization website at:
http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/sppl_e/sppl269_e.htm