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Is The Wto Quietly Fading Away? The New Regionalism And Global Trade Rules, Stephen Powell, Trisha Low

Stephen Joseph Powell

While scholars and governments alike view the liberalization of international trade as a positive development, they disagree on the medium to accomplish this objective with the highest economic returns. Some experts believe that multilateralism through the 150+ Member World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only way to achieve truly open and efficient trade. Others view multilateralism as but an aspiration and find that regionalism offers the only viable prospect for the meaningful further opening of markets.

In light of what we label New Regionalism, our paper explores in detail the positive and negative effects of regional trade arrangements (RTAs). In …

Global Laws, Local Lives: Impact Of The New Regionalism On Human Rights Compliance, Stephen Powell, Patricia Pérez

Stephen Joseph Powell

Continuation of the brisk pace of international economic growth with its necessarily increased use of natural resources—often at unsustainable levels—and its higher levels of pollution—often at the cost of citizen health—combine with the rules of the global trading system to threaten human rights to health, to freedom from forced or child labor, to non-discrimination, to a fair wage, to a healthy environment, even to democratic governance and participation in the political process. As a result, in recent years a growing number of economists begrudgingly acknowledge the incontrovertible—although presently dysfunctional—linkage between trade and human rights and the need to integrate these …

Managing The Rule Of Law In The Americas: An Empirical Portrait Of The Effects Of 15 Years Of Wto, Mercosul, And Nafta Dispute Resolution On Civil Society In Latin America, Stephen Joseph Powell, Ludmila Mendonça Lopes Ribeiro

Stephen Joseph Powell

The objective of this article is to analyze the effect of World Trade Organization (WTO), Common Market of the South (MERCOSUL), and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) disputes involving Latin American (LA) countries on perfection of the rule of law by LA governments.

Specifically, we examine the extent to which dispute settlement facilitates the strengthening by LA governments of human rights for their civil societies. Professor Powell previously has noted that trade and human rights are inextricably linked because trade rules weaken the ability of governments to promote sustainable development, to alleviate the widening gap between rich and poor, …

Expanding The Nafta Chapter 19 Dispute Settlement System: A Way To Declaw Trade Remedy Laws In A Free Trade Area Of The Americas?, Stephen Powell

Stephen Joseph Powell

Chapter 19 of the NAFTA transfers judicial review of U.S., Canadian, and Mexican government investigations under the controversial anti-dumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) laws from national courts to binational panels of private international law experts. The system stands as a unique surrender of judicial sovereignty to an international body, a hybrid of national courts and international dispute settlement with as yet no parallel in the world of international trade or other international law regimes. Binational panel decisions have been controversial because agencies chafe at their intimate examination of agency findings and supporting evidence. Panels also are viewed as substantially more …

Toward A Vibrant Peruvian Middle Class: Effects Of The Peru-United States Free Trade Agreement On Labor Rights, Biodiversity, And Indigenous Populations, Stephen J. Powell, Paola A. Chavarro

Stephen Joseph Powell

Past research confirms that trade and human rights are inextricably linked by trade's effects on poverty, labor, women, indigenous populations, health, and the environment. We identified surprisingly direct linkages between these two vital policies in WTO agreements as well as that regional trade agreements add positive indirect contributions by to rules-based governance through their emphasis on transparency, accountability, and due process by governments, as well as timeliness, inclusive record keeping, and impartiality in the administrative decisional process. The present research examines a particular country and a single trade agreement, Peru and the trade agreement between Peru and the United States. …

Should Or Must? Nature Of The Obligation Of States To Use Trade Instruments For The Advancement Of Environmental, Labor, And Other Human Rights, Stephen Powell

Stephen Joseph Powell

States have been careful to couch their human rights commitments in terms that avoid binding and measurable actions to ensure the human rights either of their own citizens or those in other countries. Despite the promise of a dozen U.N. treaties, states continue to equivocate as to measures necessary to meet critical individual needs. This essay argues that, nonetheless, the question whether economically powerful states may be held to human rights observance is not solely moral in nature. Instead, through a combination of treaties, custom, and historical facts, the human rights obligation of developed states has taken on penumbral legal …

The Cotton And Sugar Subsidies Decisions: Wto’S Dispute Settlement System Rebalances The Agreement On Agriculture, Stephen J. Powell, Andrew Schmitz

Stephen Joseph Powell

Acting on a complaint by Brazil, a WTO dispute settlement panel ruled September 8, 2004, that a variety of support programs for upland cotton exceeded reduction commitments made by the United States when it signed the 1995 WTO Agriculture Agreement and were thus not immune from challenge under the WTO Subsidies Agreement, with which the Panel then found these programs inconsistent.

The Panel's conclusions, if upheld by the WTO's Appellate Body, will have significant impact on agricultural policies for specialty and program crops of the United States, Europe, and Japan. This paper analyzes the decision, notable as the first to …

Regional Economic Arrangements And The Rule Of Law In The Americas: The Human Rights Face Of Free Trade Agreements, Stephen Powell

Stephen Joseph Powell

In past studies, we explored the more visible and controversial linkages between international trade law and non-trade issues that span a broad range of vital interests we may collectively describe as human rights law. We have addressed the widespread criticism that international trade rules are insensitive to basic human rights and that globalization has done little with its enormous power to preserve exhaustible natural resources and otherwise promote sustainable development, to alleviate the gap between rich and poor, to encourage states to grant their citizens basic human rights contained in U.N. treaties, to resolve the often conflicting policies underlying essential …

The Place Of Human Rights Law In World Trade Organization Rules, Stephen Joseph Powell

Stephen Joseph Powell

WTO rules routinely are linked to the inability of nations to make meaningful progress in sharpening environmental and other human rights protections, for example, the failure of the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development to usher in any new treaties despite the bright promise of the Rio Earth Summit of the previous decade. The common brief of environmental, medical, and development interest groups is that the market principles of supply and demand, comparative advantage, and non-discrimination on which global trade rules are built have encumbered pursuit by nations of fundamental non-economic objectives that must in any reasoned legal hierarchy …