… is from page 129 of Razeen Sally’s excellent 2008 book, New Frontiers in Free Trade: Globalization’s Future and Asia’s Rising Role:
Unilateral free trade makes economic sense, since welfare gains come quicker from own, unconditional import liberalization than from protracted international negotiations…. The WTO and bilateral and regional trade agreements can be helpful auxiliaries in advancing a liberalized agenda, but they are poor substitutes to unilateral, bottom-up liberalization.