Nowadays the trend toward trade and investment liberalization is developing under restraints of the opposite — protectionist — tendency strengthened by the shaky and unpredictable world situation, which in turn was created by the global financial and economic crisis.

In search of free trade options, the global economic community has worked out various approaches — multilateral (first via the World Trade Organization), regional (as in the European Union or the North American Free Trade Agreement) and bilateral (between individual countries of the same or of different regions).

Thus, nowadays, each country has at its disposal a choice of policies — some traditional and some quite new and sometimes unusual.