As a developing Southeast Asian state, Malaysia actively engages in REGIONAL TRADE AGREEMENTS (RTAs), such as ASEAN Free TRADE Area (AFTA), Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), and ASEAN-China Free TRADE Area (ACFTA), to pursue economic and geopolitical goals. However, these AGREEMENTS present challenges due to legal complexities, geopolitical dynamics, and economic consequences. This research explores Malaysia's strategic involvement in RTAs, focusing on their development, legal frameworks, geopolitical implications, and economic impacts. This study utilizes a doctrinal legal research methodology to analyze primary and secondary sources, including legal documents, treaties, and scholarly publications, with the goal of uncovering significant themes, recurring patterns, and deeper insights. The findings indicate that although Malaysia participates in REGIONAL TRADE AGREEMENTS (RTAs) to bolster economic resilience and foster REGIONAL integration, their effective management is challenged by constantly evolving geopolitical dynamics and uncertainties. This study contributes to ongoing discussions on REGIONALism and multilateralism within the global TRADE system.

The scope of recent REGIONAL TRADE AGREEMENTS (RTAs) is significantly broadened by introducing several clauses, including competition policy or intellectual property rights, and expanding beyond WTO obligations. These expanded RTAs not only reduce tariff rates, but also create cooperation and communication across a wide range of economic areas among member countries. If the existence of each clause has a significant and different effect on the level of entrepreneurship, even if it is equal in terms of tariff reduction, these differences in RTA can lead to heterogeneous effects on transactions between RTAs. Therefore, this research tries to examine the incremental impact of each RTA on transaction value in RTA countries. To do this, 96 RTAs were assessed among 67 ESCAP member countries in a period of 40 years, and they were estimated using PPML technique along with indicators that were appropriate for each RTA, gravity equation. The results show that: a) the clause of a competitive policy has a continuous effect on trading and has the greatest impact on the expansion of transactions followed by the government procurement clause; b) also the analysis of the increase of transactions in the internal and external boundaries show significant roles in terms of competition policy and government procurement. c ) All results are strong and valid with respect to the various specimens, and show that the presence of competitive policy and government procurement are important in increasing the RTA's impact.

The number of REGIONAL TRADE AGREEMENTS grew substantially from the first half of the 1990s to the 2000s. The purpose of the REGIONAL TRADE AGREEMENTS is to facilitate TRADE between the constituent territories and not to hinder the TRADE of other members of the territories. WTO AGREEMENTS, provide exceptions to the adoption of contrary-measures to WTO rules and principles regarding REGIONAL TRADE. It should be noted that any measure taken without due observance of the terms is contrary to the provisions of the WTO, especially the Most-Favored Nation Principle. The formation of REGIONAL TRADE AGREEMENTS requires the observance of standards for domestic and foreign TRADE between the constituent members. There are however certain ambiguities in relation to some of the concepts and terminologies used in the relevant provisions of the GATT and the GATS, which have been somewhat clarified in the panels and Appellate Body jurisprudence.

Reducing dependency on oil export and increasing non-oil export was one of the most important aims of the 3rd-5 year development plan. The aim was to increase the share of non-oil export from 18% in (3rd D.P) to 33.6% in the 4th-5 year dev. Plan. Hence the in order to recognize TRADE target markets through the TRADE potentiality analysis between Iran and selected countries such as: Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey, Russia, Turkmenistan, Jeorgia and Kazakhistan, we use the comparative export and import vector methods in 2008. The result shows that Iran’s export to the selected countries except Turkey was more than export potentiality of these countries. So, there is no more opportunity for RTAs with these countries for export. But Iran imports from these selected countries were less than import potentiality. Thus we conclude that (RTAs) can be used only for the import potentialities rather than non-oil export.

In present study, Iranian TRADE network has been analyzed in the world TRADE network using a complex network approach and the role of TRADE AGREEMENTS in ECO, D8 and Organization of Islamic Cooperation. To achieve this purpose, the data of 150 countries during 2010-2019 has been investigated through complex network approach and Louvain Community Detection Algorithm. This lead to recognize TRADE communities and situation of Iran among some selected business communities using indices of centrality, clustering and density. In order to study the role of REGIONAL TRADE AGREEMENTS, business communities were compared with the network of TRADE AGREEMENTS through the use of Information theory criterion. The results showed that Iran has been in Asia-Africa TRADE community during the years. The findings related to density and clustering index demonstrated the improvement in multilateral TRADE relations between the countries. However, the centrality indices indicated the decline in Iran's position in 2019 compared to 2010 in the mentioned TRADE community. The criterion of Information Theory revealed that TRADE AGREEMENTS have not played important role in countries’ decisions related to TRADE so that this role has been decreased within this period in the global TRADE network. Consequently, the importance of transREGIONAL countries in domestic TRADE is very vital.

Economic integration has been an inevitable in recent years. One of the main aspects of integration is an increasing TRADE between members and neighboring countries. If it’s true, partner countries could have TRADE periods as similarities. This study is based on the assumption that economic integration and cooperation can increase TRADE volume, economic welfare and economics return to scale for members. Therefore this study evaluates the impact of bilateral agricultural TRADE in according to free TRADE AGREEMENTS (FTAs). In this study, the panel data method and gravity model were used. Results indicated that Iran and Turkey take more benefits from free TRADE agreement; also the distance between countries has negative impact on TRADE volume of them.