Regional trade agreements (RTAs) have proliferated in recent decades, with increasingly stringent environmental clauses aimed at mitigating trade impacts. However, studies on the environmental effects of RTAs typically focus on a few agreements and indicators, hindering a comprehensive understanding of their effects across various resources. Additionally, the long-term effectiveness of environmental provisions within RTAs remains unclear. To address this gap, we applied a rigorous counterfactual analysis to evaluate changes in multiple resource footprints associated with RTAs and environmental provisions across 195 countries annually from 1990 to 2018. We examined four key resources: primary energy, raw materials, blue water, and land use. Findings revealed that RTAs were linked to the outsourcing of environmental footprints across all resource types while reducing footprint insourcing, a phenomenon known as environmental impact shifting. This effect was particularly evident in wealthier countries, where outsourcing of primary energy, primarily from lower-income nations, rose by 11.6%, raw materials by 13.6%, and land use by 33.5%, compared to similar non-RTA countries. Furthermore, these countries’ insourcing of primary energy was reduced by 48.3% and blue water by 15.4% relative to non-RTA counterparts. Environmental provisions within RTAs had limited long-term effectiveness in reducing environmental footprints outsourcing. Global trends show a growing disparity in resource use between wealthy and poor countries, exacerbated by RTAs. Rigorous footprint accounting and a resource-equity mechanism, including ecological premiums for resource-intensive imports, are essential within RTAs. Wealthier nations must adopt more accountable consumption-based governance, prioritising reductions in material consumption to alleviate the socio-ecological impacts on poorer countries.