Trade creation is an analytical concept from the economics of preferential agreements. It describes what happens when a trade bloc causes a member to stop buying from a higher-cost domestic producer and start buying from a lower-cost producer inside the bloc — the tariff preference removes an artificial reason to make something at home that someone else makes more cheaply. Its counterpart is trade diversion, and in practice an agreement produces both at once, in different products and in different years. Whether the net effect is beneficial is an empirical question about volumes, cost differences and elasticities in the particular case; the concept itself settles nothing.
Why this entry carries no source list. This is an analytical concept from economics, not an instrument any body administers. There is no authority to cite because none is needed: the idea is used to reason about trade, not applied by a customs officer to a consignment. Where numbers are involved they come from statistical compilations whose conventions differ, so figures from two sources are not automatically comparable.