The growing industry influences the existing patchwork of international trade globally (Fig. 1).
A patchwork of certifications, such as Fair Trade and Rainforest Alliance, assured farmers higher prices in exchange for specific economic or environmental practices.
Analysts say the continent must consolidate its patchwork of small countries and 30 overlapping trade blocs into a single huge market.
The benefits of a multilateral trade deal are vastly superior to those of a patchwork of bilateral and regional agreements.A second risk is of more trade disputes.
Shippers have vigorously fought the idea of levying a transportation fuel tax, noting that if some countries repealed those provisions of the Chicago Convention, it would wreak havoc with global trade, creating an uneven patchwork of fuel taxes.
The prior regime, he says, had "blown tens of millions on a Rube Goldberg patchwork of processors, servers and applications" that delayed trade executions.
Companies are indicating they prefer the certainty of federal standards to an uncertain patchwork of local regulations and, thus, the cap-and-trade concept has drawn limited support from some Fortune 500 companies, including Alcoa and DuPont.
What you see there now is a steadily developing patchwork of protections, the remarkable result of private efforts, state and municipal programs, reclamation trade-offs, and the gradual substitution of small organic farms for the old toxic monocultures.
Because the growing patchwork of these deals have widely different rules, the simplicity and predictability of a single global trading system is being superseded by what Jagdish Bhagwati, an economist and a long-standing foe of regionalism, has called the "spaghetti bowl" of preferential deals.
Also, unlike the federal protections that have traditionally been afforded patents, trademarks and copyrights, trade secrets have been protected historically not by a federal right but by a patchwork of state statutes.
