Question

Discuss about how Covid-19 pandemic affect the implementation of Free Trade Agreements (FTA)

Answer 1

COVID-19 pandemic, has caused all the governments of different nations to give full attention to form stimulus packages for the domestic industries, households and arrange health care supplied and other essential goods. It has made countries to build trade arrangements with those nations that can meet the demand for health care supplies, devices and ventilators and other essential goods. It has caused implementation of new free trade agreements to become a secondary concern in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic, even though the existing free trade agreements exists and operational in nature. So, trade agreements are being formed between the nations such as between India and China ( before the escalation of border conflict) or Many African nations and China. So, international trade agreements take place of different nature and process of free trade agreement formation is slowed down. It is also due to the reason that governments are framing policies that give more protection and benefits such as subsidies and tax benefits, and these benefits are detrimental to the formation of free trade agreement. Hence, in this way, free trade agreement formation is negatively affected due to COVID-19 pandemic.