Chun-Chien Kuo: The previous unsatisfactory Doha Development Round negotiation had been facilitating free trade agreement talks and negotiations worldwide in the past decade, especially with the latest emergency of the three merging mega-FTAs: Asian-centric Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Although FTA-related research has flourished in recent decades in regional studies, this paper takes the pioneering explorations on the emerging three mega-FTAs altogether. I personally enjoyed reading this interesting and well-written paper. It did a good job explaining the factors in the emergencies, evolution, and development of the three emerging mega-FTAs in great detail. It clearly outlines their distinctive features on memberships, objectives, and negotiating agenda; their quantifiable benefits and dissenting voices; their issues and challenges; and likely outcomes.
In Section 2, this paper not only shows the current membership feature differences, but also provides thorough explanations of the...