A Geo-Economic Turn in Trade Policy‪?‬

“Focusing on how Europe pursues strategic trade agreements with Asian partners, as well as the response of the US and China to the strategic context of EU trade policy in Asia, this empirically rich edited volume covers both the negotiations as well the design of specific chapters of preferential trade agreements. It will be important for those focusing on the structural power and systemic rivalry in international trade politics in the Asia-Pacific region.”

—Michelle Egan, American University


“This great volume is one of the first to address directly the recent geo- politicization of EU trade policy. It is also notable for its promising merger of the International Political Economy and Foreign Policy literatures, which often exist in their own academic silos. Bringing together an impressive roster of established and rising scholars from all around the globe, A Geo-Economic Turn in Trade Policy shine a particularly important focus on the Asia-Pacific region, which is of obvious contemporary relevance. A must-read!”


—Sophie Meunier, Princeton University


Contemporary trade policy is increasingly framed in geo-strategic terms. But how much of that rhetoric is reflected in actual policy choices by the European Union or its trading partners? This book provides the first systematic study of the broader international context in which EU trade agreements are conceived, negotiated, and designed. Building on arefined conceptualisation of geo-economics, the book develops a cogent framework that combines insights from scholarship on the design of free trade agreements with ideas from foreign policy analysis. Empirically, the analysis focuses on the relations between the EU and the Asia-Pacific.


Johan Adriaensen is Assistant Professor at Maastricht University, Netherlands. His research focuses on institutional politics and EU trade policy. He is the author of National Administrations in EU Trade Policy (2016).

Evgeny Postnikov is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He has published on trade and sustainable development in leading journals and is author of Social Standards in EU and US Trade Agreements (2020).