Free trade agreement negotiations require product-level evidence because aggregate trade values often hide the tariff lines where market-access gains, sector sensitivities and third-country effects are concentrated. This paper demonstrates how the Trade Intelligence and Negotiation Adviser (TINA), developed by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, can be used as a negotiation-intelligence platform for ex-ante FTA simulation. The applied case is a hypothetical Türkiye-Japan FTA using 2024 baseline trade flows and two directional tariff-elimination scenarios: Japan reducing tariffs on selected Turkish products to zero and Türkiye reducing tariffs on selected Japanese products to zero. The partial-equilibrium simulation estimates trade creation, trade diversion and total trade effects at the HS six-digit level. Results show a strong directional asymmetry. Türkiye's simulated gain in Japan is about US$295.59 million across 380 affected products, concentrated in pasta, fisheries, apparel, processed foods and fruits. Japan's simulated gain in Türkiye is about US$988.06 million across 2,019 affected products, led by passenger vehicles, auto parts, electrical equipment, machinery, motorcycles, steel and precision instruments. Trade creation accounts for most gains in both directions, but trade diversion remains large enough to require sector-level scrutiny. The paper concludes that TINA outputs should not be read as a complete forecast of a final agreement. Their main value is to identify where negotiators should investigate first, which sectors merit offensive requests, and where defensive sensitivities and non-tariff barriers require complementary analysis.

Keywords

Simulation Model, Economic Analysis, Intelligent Simulation, PLS-SEM