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Policy dilemmas in Singapore’s RTA strategy

At a crossroads, Singapore is faced with several policy dilemmas domestically and externally as it seeks ways and means to reinvent its developmental state and political economy. The paper examines Singapore’s evolving foreign economic policy in the context of multilateralism propelled by globalization, information communication technology, knowledge-based economy and deregulation. The same has spawned new regionalism driven more by political economy than pure economics. Essentially, the argument is small, open city-state Singapore thriving on free trade needs to diversify from the region and secures itself more globally in bilateral free trade agreements with strategic trading partners. Changing geoeconomics and geopolitics combined in globalization has posed difficulties for the World Trade Organization (WTO) and multilateralism. Multilayered trade liberalization policy combining regionalism with multilateralism is increasingly recognized with regionalism growing apace in the Asia-Pacific. Divergent macroeconomics and circumstance require Singapore to assure the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that its bilateral trade arrangements are not meant to be destructive and neither can ASEAN be bystanders in the changing global economy. Singapore straddles and balances between contending interests and dilemmas with likeminded partners in its bilateral free trade agreements. By example, conscientious adherence and operation within the WTO and multilateralism, Singapore may yet convince other developing economies to adapt to the new global and regional environment to wed new regionalism with multilateral free trade.