An important trend that is noticed in international economy has been the growth of intra-regional trade and this type of trade has been fostered by the economic cooperation and integration schemes or trading blocs.
International trade consists broadly of the following namely;
1. intra regional trade
2. inter regional trade
There is also a talk of regionalization vs globalization of world trade. There has been world wide trade towards forming new regional arrangements in order to strengthen the existing ones. Several regional integration schemes have been formed by the developed and developing countries duly inspired by European Economic Commission.
Effective from the second world war, countries are seeking increasing trade cooperation among themselves . When it comes to economic cooperation between the countries, there are many namely; agreement between two or more nations towards reduction in the barriers of trade and the full scale economic integration of two or more national economies.
These trade alliances immensely help the international marketing prospects which include harmonization of business requirements such as packaging requirements, a common currency that allows the customers to more easily comparable pricing across countries and economic development that leads to more consumers who can afford to buy more products.
Economic integration is found to be a global term which includes several forms of arrangements by which two or more countries agree to draw their economies close together . It has been found that all these agreements have one common feature namely; using tariffs to discriminate against goods produced by countries which are not parties to the agreements. This kind of discrimination is achieved by providing preferential treatment of goods produced by the other member countries.
The four degrees of important economic cooperation and integration are as