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This article examines the relations between workplace and local labor regimes, global production networks (GPNs), and the state-led creation of expanded markets as spaces of capitalist regulation through trade policy. Through an examination of the ways in which labor regimes are constituted as a result of the articulation of local social relations and lead-firm pressure in GPNs, the article examines the limits of labor provisions in European Union trade policy seeking to ameliorate the worst consequences of trade liberalization and economic integration on working conditions. The article takes as its empirical focus the Moldovan clothing industry, the leading export-oriented manufacturing sector in the country. Trade liberalization has opened up a market space for EU lead firms to contract with Moldovan-based suppliers, but in seeking to regulate labor conditions in the process of trade liberalization, the mechanisms …