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The ASEAN-China Free Trade Area (ACFTA) represents a critical agreement between ASEAN member countries and China, aimed at fostering economic integration by eliminating or reducing trade barriers, enhancing service market access, refining investment regulations, and bolstering economic cooperation. This framework is designed to strengthen economic ties and enhance welfare across the involved nations. This study evaluates the impact of the ACFTA on trade dynamics by analyzing the Trade Intensity Index (TII), GDP, exchange rates, and a dummy variable representing the ACFTA's implementation. Utilizing annual data from 2001 to 2021, sourced from the UN-Comtrade Database and the World Bank, the research employs the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method to provide insights into the trade relationships under the ACFTA framework. The findings indicate a divergent impact, while Indonesia experiences a negative and significant influence from GDP, exchange rates, and ACFTA implementation, the ASEAN-6 countries display a positive and significant effect. Moreover, the study reveals that Indonesia's Trade Intensity Index with other ACFTA members is comparatively lower than Malaysia’s. This suggests a need for targeted trade policies in Indonesia aimed at amplifying export volumes in sectors where it holds a comparative advantage. Such strategies could significantly enhance Indonesia's trade intensity within the ACFTA, fostering greater economic integration and benefits under this expansive regional trade agreement.

The paper investigates trade and investment relations between India and its two major trading partners, viz. the U.S. and China in the 2000-2010s. On the basis of mixed method research with equal use of quantitative and qualitative, as well as historical and statistical methods, the authors estimate the possibilities for expanding interstate interactions and the difficulties the countries might face. By comparing the scale and particulars of the product structure of Indo-American and Indo-Chinese trade, the authors reveal that intra-industry trade between India and the United States is at a fairly high level, which, in turn, is not typical for the trade between India and China, which is mostly inter-industry due to the sluggish cooperation of Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs. The authors assess the intensity of the Indo-American and Indo-Chinese bilateral trade between 2000-2018 by means of indices of intensity of Indias exports and imports to / from the USA and China, as well as indices of intensity of exports and imports of its partners to / from India. The obtained results outline the upward trend of the share of Indian exports to the U.S. relative to other countries, which indicates that India is successfully conquering the U.S. market, and Indian goods are becoming increasingly competitive. Meanwhile, the volume of Indian-Chinese trade remains on a much lower level than it could be expected with the current share of India in the world trade. In the meantime, neither for the United States nor for China, India is a dominant partner. The article also investigates major obstacles hindering the development of both Indo-American and Indo-Chinese bilateral relations. The obtained results enable the authors to predict that in the short- and mid-term economic cooperation between India and its leading partners is likely to strengthen, with India keeping striving for standing neuter while building the two most crucial vectors of its foreign economic policy.

The relevance of this study is tied to the fact, that more effective application of export potential represents a major step towards the integration of Latvia’s economy into a unified economic framework with other European Union countries. In addition, the lack of a generally accepted methodology for assessing export potential increases the significance of these studies from a methodological point of view. The purpose of this study is to analyse the trends in Latvian exports and assess the possibilities of increasing the volume of exports of goods to the EU countries. This study applied quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis, analysis of statistical data, methods for assessing the intensity, complementarity of trade between two countries and the potential for exporting Latvian goods to EU countries. The study identifies the countries and categories of goods where Latvian trade potential to EU can be increased. The authors of the article propose criteria for determining possibility of increasing the export of various groups of goods. The paper may be of interest to all export transaction participants, including manufacturers, merchants, and professional associations. The export expansion assessment method applied by the authors may be adopted by exporting companies to identify groups of goods that have export growth reserves.

This study explores alternative ways toward the East Asian monetary union, focusing on the effect of monetary integration on bilateral trade. For this purpose, we analyze with gravity model changes of the bilateral trade among countries of EU, NAFTA, and East Asia. A distinctive feature of this model is that it includes the dummy variables that show the cultural intimacy among North-East Asian countries, Asian NIEs countries, and East Asian countries (North-East Asian and ASEAN countries). We discovered that bilateral trade increased at a highest level among East Asian countries than the other two cases. This result suggests that the once-and-for-all strategy to develop an East Asian monetary union including North-East Asian and ASEAN countries would be more efficient than the multitrack strategy that forms the monetary union of North-East Asian countries in the first place and then tries to extend it to ASEAN countries.