This article questions if regional trade agreements (RTAs) are replacing global trade rules and making the World Trade Organization (WTO) less important. It suggests that the current global trade system, which focuses on one big agreement for all countries, may not work anymore because there are so many RTAs. These RTAs can help or hurt the global trade system - they can help countries join the big trade agreements, but they can also break the rule that all countries should be treated the same. The researchers say that RTAs are becoming more important than the WTO for trade. They believe that the big global trade agreement is hard to make happen and suggest that smaller, specialized deals might be better. Overall, this study argues that the increase in RTAs might be changing how the world does trade and could be a problem for global trade rules.