What Strategies Should South Africa Follow in Negotiating Trade Agreements? South Africa is a rapidly developing state, especially in comparison to its other African counterparts. Trading with countries like the European Union, China and the United States reinforces that it uses multilateralism as its primary means of trade. The state's Minister of Trade and Industry notes that South Africa is a strong supporter of multilateralism. It is a fundamental principle of our foreign policy and a central element of our trade policy. In our view, multilateralism is the necessary intergovernmental response to globalization and interdependence. South Africa, with others, has actively pursued a policy aimed at reforming multilateral institutions to ensure that developing countries are able to play a more decisive role in setting priorities for effective global economic governance . Over the past decade, South Africa's trade policy has undergone several changes. . These include multilateral reductions in tariffs and subsidies in line with the country's WTO commitments, the signing of two important FTAs ​​and, more recently, several negotiations around future commitments to of liberalization, both at the multilateral and regional level. These simultaneous developments have had an important influence on both de facto protections and welfare. Despite the importance of multilateral reforms, regional and bilateral trade agreements have, to a large extent, defined trade policy in the new democratic era. The two main types of agreements on the table were FTAs ​​with the European Union (EU) and with the Southern African Development Community (SADC). These agreements, however, did not have a significant impact during the 1990s and only...... middle of paper ...... and the key lies in unlocking growth and development in the developing countries. It might be interesting to ask the question to what extent democratic approaches to trade negotiations in South Africa have changed over the past decade, particularly with regard to trade agreements at the multilateral and regional levels. Initially, when the ANC government came to power, policymakers were motivated solely by mercantilist considerations. Their desire was non-reciprocal access to global markets and more effort was devoted to securing market access, with less recognition given to unilateral reforms. Furthermore, the importance of regionalism as a limited form of liberalization was seen as very important, particularly because it could be more systematically linked to greater "development considerations" and broader market access. , particularly in the EU (Ismail et al., 2002).