Law Commons^™

Greening The Wto: Ega, Tariff Concessions And Policy Likeness, Petros C. Mavroidis, Damien J. Neven

Faculty Scholarship

This paper considers the APEC and EGA agreements which grant tariff concession through HS classifications beyond the six digit level ("ex outs") in favour of "green" goods and discuss how these initiatives fit into the WTO legal regime. Even if the practical significance of the APEC agreement should not be overestimated as it involves modest tariff concessions over a subset of goods which are not heavily traded, these agreements involve a paradigm shift to the extent that they use tariffs concessions negotiated on a plurilateral basis as a policy instrument to meet public policy concern, instead of making market access …

Things Have Changed (Or Have They?): Tariff Protection And Environmental Concerns In The Wto, Petros C. Mavroidis, Damien J. Neven

Faculty Scholarship

This paper considers the APEC and proposed EGA agreements which grant tariff concession in favor of "green" goods. We find that the practical significance of the APEC agreement should not be overestimated as it involves modest tariff concessions over a subset of goods which are not heavily traded. Still, these agreements involve a paradigm shift to the extent that they use tariffs concessions negotiated on a plurilateral basis as a policy instrument to meet public policy concern, instead of making market access conditional on meeting national regulations. We model the mechanism through which these tariff preferences provide incentives to change …

The Tpp And The Rcep (Asean+6) As Potential Paths Toward Deeper Asian Economic Integration, Meredith Kolsky Lewis

Journal Articles

Facing the trend of globalization, voices within Asia have been calling for deeper Asian integration. In the international economic context, numerous competing visions have been proffered over the years as to what form that integration should take, and which country or countries should lead that process. Amongst these various possible forms of integration, the Trans-Pacific Partnership has emerged as a contender to expand into a Free Trade Agreement of the Asia-Pacific. Unlike any models proposed previously, the TPP includes the United States, but at present does not include China. In turn, the momentum of the TPP appears to have spurred …

Reassessing Apec's Role As A Trans-Regional Economic Architecture: Legal And Policy Dimensions, Pasha L. Hsieh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article examines the two-decade evolution of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the future prospects for Asian regionalism. It argues that while APEC retains advantages over competing regional structures, it should undergo reforms to accelerate the Bogor Goals and ensure its complementarity with the World Trade Organization (WTO). The article first analyzes the impact of stake-holding countries’ trade policies on APEC’s structure and development. By assessing APEC’s soft-law mechanism, it explores APEC’s WTO-plus contributions that reinvigorated the International Technology Agreement negotiations and improved supply chain facilitation. APEC’s goal of creating a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) can …

The Trans-Pacific Partnership And Japanese Politics, Eliot Francis Watson

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

International Initiatives That Facilitate Global Mobility In Higher Education, Laurel S. Terry

Laurel S. Terry

This article identifies a number of international initiatives that have contributed to, reflect, or facilitate global higher education mobility. The article begins by presenting statistics about global higher education mobility. The sections that follow address a number of “hard law” and “soft law” international initiatives that promote such mobility. The initiatives discussed in the article include, inter alia, European Union initiatives, the Bologna Process which led to the creation of the European Higher Education Area, and higher education initiatives of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and …

Rules Of Origin As International Trade Hindrances, Hatem Mohamed Mabrouk

Hatem Mohamed Mabrouk

This paper talks about the usage of Rules of Origin (RoO) as protectionist apparatuses in different regional trade areas, as the North American Free Trade Area, the African Growth and Opportunity Act and the South African Development Community, and the usage of RoO as trade-diverting tools. In addition, the paper talks about the spaghetti-bowl phenomenon, with an emphasis on the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation region, and clarifies how to achieve a proper harmonization of both non-preferential and preferential RoO as a solution to overcome the previously mentioned odds facing international trade. Moreover, the paper suggests the adoption of more solutions as …

From Gats To Apec: The Impact Of Trade Agreements On Legal Services, Laurel S. Terry

Journal Articles

This article provides a comprehensive overview of the treatment of legal services in the United States’ international trade agreements. Although many individuals are now familiar with the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), far fewer realize that legal services are included in at least fifteen international trade agreements to which the United States is a party. This article begins by identifying those trade agreements and other developments including the 2009 Legal Services Initiative of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). The article continues by explaining the structure of the GATS and comparing its provisions to the provisions found in …

Transnational Legal Practice 2009, Laurel S. Terry, Carole Silver, Ellyn Rosen

Laurel S. Terry

This article identifies some of the most important U.S. and international developments in transnational legal practice and provides citations for further research. The article begins by briefly reviewing the impact of the recession on legal services. The second section focuses on international developments. It identifies some of the ongoing efforts to implement the 2007 U.K. Legal Services Act, including the issuance of the influential Hunt and Smedley reports. It also provides information about law reform initiatives in France, Scotland and Korea. This section of the article also provides information about Canadian and Australian developments regarding admission of foreign applicants and …

An Essential Element Of Fair Trade And Sustainable Development In The Ftaa Is An Enforceable Social Clause, Terry Collingsworth

Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business

Multinational companies (“MNCs”) and governments that are fantasizing about a Free Trade Area of the Americas (“FTAA”) should accept the reality that the FTAA is not politically viable for the time being unless the issues of labor rights and other social conditions are addressed in a manner demonstrating that these rights are consistent with commercial rights that are protected in careful detail in many pages of the draft FTAA agreement.

To The Yukon And Beyond: Local Laborers In A Global Market, Katherine V.W. Stone

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article explores the possibilities for effective protection of labor rights in the emerging global labor market. It explores existing forms of transnational labor regulation, including both hard regulation, i.e., regulation by state-centered institutions, and soft regulation, i.e., regulation through private actors responding to market forces. The author finds that existing regulatory approaches are inadequate to ensure that the global marketplace will offer adequate labor standards to its global workforce. She proposes new approaches to global labor regulation, approaches that blend hard and soft law by reshaping market forces and embedding them in a regulatory framework that is protective of …

Preferential Trade Agreements: The Wrong Road, Jagdish N. Bhagwati

Faculty Scholarship

The nature of FTAs is to offer free trade only to members, not to non-members. Thus, FTAs are two-faced: they ensure free trade for members and (relative) protection against non-members. First-year students of international economics would be asked to shift to a different field if they could not grasp this elementary and elemental distinction, and yet today's politicians imagine themselves to be statesmen endorsing free trade when they embrace these inherently discriminatory PTAs.

As PTAs proliferate, the main problem that arises is the accompanying proliferation of discrimination in market access and a whole maze of trade duties and barriers that …

Apec As A New Model Of Regional Economic Cooperation: Compatibility With Gatt, Bing Ding

LLM Theses and Essays

Today’s driving forces in world trade are private trade, investment flows, technological progress, and job creation. These forces create momentum towards the further integration of economy within their respective regions. The challenge for governments today is to reinforce these trends in favor of long-term economic benefits, while resisting the temptation to make short-term adjustments for growth. Regionalism is being considered as a solution to contemporary international economic problems; with the division of the world into the three major trading blocs of the EC, NAFTA, and APEC, regionalism seems to be the fastest road to multilateral free trade. This paper proposes …