Intra-firm Trade in the French Agrifood Multinationals: What changes since 1993?

By definition, the multinational firm (MNF) controls a set of affiliates located in different countries. Therefore, it is able to internalize a part of its international trade within a market internal to its organization (intra-firm trade). By this very fact, does intra-firm trade (IFT) become the standard of international trade in the context of increasing corporate globalization and economic regionalization? At all events, they have strongly intensified in the agrifood sector. In 1999, one third of French international trade in agro food products was carried out inside multinational firms. Thus, far from generating a substitution between production and trade, setting up MNF leads to a transformation in the nature of trade, the determinants of which may differ from those directly carried out on the market.