Pity computer manufacturers from Taiwan, beef farmers from Australia and carmakers from Japan. Thanks to the recent trade deal between South Korea and the US, they may well become the latest victims of a phenomenon increasingly worrying businesses and trade ministers: “trade diversion”. As bilateral trade deals proliferate across the world, export markets may increasingly reward not the more efficient producer but the more privileged one.

Though referred to by exultant signatories as “free trade agreements” (FTAs), accords such as the South Korea-US pact and similar deals currently being pursued by the European Union, are viewed by many economists as doing more to tangle trade than to free it. Their worries are compounded by glacial progress in the multilateral so-called “Doha round” of trade talks.