International Law Commons^™

Convergence And The Implementation Of A Single Set Of Global Standards: The Real-Life Challenge, Mary Tokar

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

This paper addresses the impact of convergence on auditing firms by focusing on the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). While the adoption of the IFRSs by companies around the globe is intended to achieve convergence in accounting by eliminating different national approaches to financial reporting, many challenges arise from the process of adoption of the IFRSs, as well as from the ongoing and still incomplete process of convergence of national standards with the IFRSs.

The $4 Billion Question: An Analysis Of Congressional Responses To The Fsc/Eti Dispute Under Wto Export Subsidy Standards, William Chou

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

During the decade-long relationship between the United States and the World Trade Organization (WTO), perhaps no controversy has fomented as long and bitterly as the dispute over the U.S. tax benefits for exporters. This article analyzes two competing bills before the House of Representatives, both devised to bring the United States in compliance with the WTO's ruling against the U.S. Foreign Sale Corporation (FSC) and Exterritorial Income (ETI) tax regimes as prohibited export subsidies. Hit with a $4 billion retaliatory tariff by the European Union, the House sought new tax legislation that would preserve at least some of the tax …

Meaning, Ambiguity And Legitimacy: Judicial (Re-)Construction Of Nafta Chapter 11, Ari Afilalo

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) benignly named the "Investment Chapter," is a theater for some of the most advanced issues of 21st century international law and adjudication. The Chapter gives private parties the right to challenge national policies that burden their ability to do business freely. It empowers arbitral tribunals to assess damages against the governments of NAFTA parties. The adjudicators, as this Article illustrates, render opinions with a constitutional flavor in that they assess the validity of domestic norms against larger principles of international economic law. In a drastic move away from classical century …

A Dual Catastrophe Of Protectionism, Sungjoon Cho

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Suppose that a consortium of wealthy and powerful local industries, acting through lawmakers captured by these industries, managed to pass a statute, damaging to the larger public welfare, purely for a protectionist purpose. Suppose further that this statute victimizes exports from a small, poor country such as Vietnam, to a large, rich country such as the United States, because these imported products are cheaper and thus pose a competitive threat to rival domestic industries. Suppose also that courts in the importing country can do little to stop this chain of events. Rational individuals might find these events objectionable, if not …

General Exclusion Orders Under Section 337, Gary M. Hnath

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Your company, Widgets Unlimited, imports foreign-made widgets into the United States. One day, you're informed that U.S. Customs & Border Protection (Customs) has detained your goods and is determining whether they infringe a patent owned by The American Widget Corporation, based on an exclusion order issued by the International Trade Commission (ITC) after a recent ITC investigation, titled Certain Widgets with Extra Shiny Surfaces. Since you were never a party to any proceeding at the ITC, and indeed, you never even knew American Widget had patents on its widgets, you conclude that there must be some mistake and wait for …

Creation Of World Wide Accounting Standards: Convergence And Independence, David S. Ruder, Charles T. Canfield, Hudson T. Hollister

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

"Cross-border trading" in the stocks of multinational companies is the code word for the ability of all companies worldwide to be able to sell their securities in the markets of all countries. In a cross-border trading environment, the world's investment resources would be freely available to companies in all countries and capital would be allocated in an optimal fashion. One of the primary barriers to cross-border trading is the requirement that the financial statements of the companies being traded in the securities markets of a particular country be compatible. With comparable financial statements, multinational companies would be able to access …

A Securities Regulator Looks At Onvergence, Donald T. Nicolaisen

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

For many years there has been a dedicated group of practitioners, standard setters, business leaders and others from around the world who have worked to establish a single set of globally accepted accounting standards for the benefit of the capital markets. These people clearly had their hearts in the right place but, absent a binding mandate to apply the standards, it seemed largely a labor of love. Now I expect those pioneering initiatives and the many years of effort to pay off because in 2005 a large number of companies are joining what up to now has been a limited …

Setting A Global Standard: The Case For Accounting Convergence, David Tweedie, Thomas R. Seidenstein

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

As capital markets play an increasingly central role in today's modern economies, policy-makers are confronted with the question of how to assure the continued effective functioning of these markets and, in particular, how to develop a sound financial reporting infrastructure. Recent experience suggests that such a reporting infrastructure must be built on accounting standards that are consistent, comprehensive, and based on clear principles to enable financial reports to reflect underlying economic reality.

International Convergence Of Accounting Standards-Perspectives From The Fasb On Challenges And Opportunities, Robert H. Herz, Kimberley R. Petrone

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Convergence of international accounting standards is not a new initiative at the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB or Board); in fact, the FASB has pursued international "convergence" for almost half of its more than thirty year existence.' The FASB's international activities initially fell under the heading of harmonization, or internationalization, of accounting standards. Today those activities are referred to as convergence.Whatever the term, the Board has long held the view that a single set of high-quality international accounting standards is desirable because its use will improve international comparability of financial information; reduce costs to financial statement users, preparers, auditors, and …

Injury Investigations In "Material Retardation" Antidumping Cases, Prakash Narayanan

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Despite the criticisms of economists to antidumping measures, they continue to be the most often used trade remedy measure. A new trend that may be observed is the use of the "material retardation" standard of injury to demonstrate injury to domestic industry that is one of the requirements for imposing antidumping duty. It is essential to be wary of this trend as unlike the other two types of injury, the WTO lacks specific guidelines for the use of this standard. The general rules in the Antidumping Agreement are unsuitable for the situations where the material retardation standard is relevant, and …

Test Of Multilateralism In International Trade: U.S. Steel Safeguards, Y.S. Lee

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The highly publicized safeguard measures applied by the United States to an array of steel products in 2002 became one of the biggest and most controversial trade disputes in recent history. Virtually all major trading nations in the world, including the European Community, Japan , China , Brazil , Korea , New Zealand , Switzerland and Norway , were the direct parties to this dispute with the United States . The contentious legal grounds of the U.S. safeguard measures, as well as the lack of adequate consultations between the United States and its trading counterparts, have brought the international community …

Changing Notions Of Sovereignty And Federalism In The International Economic System: A Reassessment Of Wto Regulation Of Federal States And The Regional And Local Governments Within Their Territories, Edward T. Hayes

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

International trade liberalization increasingly addresses disciplines which fall within the constitutional competence of regional and local governments. Traditional notions of nation/state sovereignty are evolving to recognize the importance of regional and local actors on the international economic scene. The ongoing evolution of international trade and sovereignty incresasingly places regional and local governments in a unique position to influence world trade, positively and negatively.

This article explores the manner in which the World Trade Organization attempts to regulate regional and local behavior. Specifically, this Article explores the inherent constitutional tension and resulting ambiguities in the WTO's effort to regulate regional and …

Trips' Rebound: An Historical Analysis Of How The Trips Agreement Can Ricochet Back Against The United States, Donald P. Harris

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Recently, scholars and commentators around the world have reexamined the role intellectual property rights (IPRs) play in hindering or helping developing countries. These scholars have questioned the doctrine the IPRs help developing countries by promoting economic development, increasing foreign direct investment, stimulating domestic innovation, and improving access to new technologies, and have concluded that imposing "Western-styled" intellectual property regimes (e.g., the U.S. patent regime) on developing countries harms those countries. In particular, such regimes fail to bring any of the purported benefits, while they impose many costs, including preventing people from obtaining life-saving drugs. This Article argues that it is …

The Spirit Of Trips And The Importation Of Medicines Made Under Compulsory License After The August 2003 Trips Council Agreement, Jessica J. Fayerman

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement has changed prospects for access to necessary medications in the developing world. The use of compulsory licensing for pharmaceutical products embodied in Article 31 of TRIPS has been a contentious issue. Prior to 2003, countries with no manufacturing capacity of their own were not allowed to import medicines made under compulsory license, rendering the protections of Article 31 of little use to them. The 2003 Motta Agreement changed this. This expansion of the compulsory licensing power is both an impractical solution and it dilutes the premises upon which TRIPS was originally …

Substantive Appraisal Of Horizontal Mergers Under Eec Regulation 4064/89: An Inquiry Into The Commission's First Year Decisions, Frank M. Hellemans

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Rather, our purpose is to examine what criteria the Regulation prescribes for the substantive appraisal of mergers. We will not only scrutinize Article 2 of the Regulation and the different policies behind it, but we will also inquire into the Commission's decisions in order to find out how the Commission has applied the Regulation's substantive criteria to 'real live' mergers and acquisitions. Broadly speaking, this involves questions of product and geographic market definition, of calculating market shares and interpreting them and, finally, of basic goals of mergers control policy.

Current Administration Of U.S. Antidumping And Countervailing Duty Laws: Implications For Prospective U.S.-Mexico Free Trade Talks, Stephen J. Powell, Craig R. Giesse, Craig L. Jackson

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

U.S.-Mexico trade relations are changing at a rapid pace. In 1985, the United States and Mexico entered into a bilateral trade agreement that seeks to eliminate the subsidization of manufactured products. One year later, Mexico became a signatory to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (the "GATT"), the multilateral accord that governs world trade in manufactured and agricultural products. In 1987, the two countries entered into a framework agreement that establishes a consultative mechanism designed to resolve bilateral trade disputes involving such issues as intellectual property protection, direct foreign investment, and trade in goods and services.

Worker Rights In The Post-1992 European Communities: What "Social Europe" Means To United States-Based Multinational Employers, Donald C. Jr. Dowling

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The United States media have extensively covered the trade angle of the European Communities [EC] program to create a "single market" by the end of 1992. The media coverage has spotlighted the benefits the EC market will offer multinational corporations, such as the market's "economies of scale" and its 320 million consumer block. By now this 1992 news has sunk in, and many United States corporations are assessing how they might exploit the soon-to-be unified EC market.

Strangers In A Strange Land: Foreign Compulsion And The Extraterritorial Application Of United States Employment Law, Michael A. Jr. Warner

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The increasingly interdependent nature of the world economy has made commonplace the overseas employment of United States citizens by United States multinational corporations. When an American company employs a United States citizen in a foreign country questions arise as to what extent the United States may regulate employment activity taking place outside of United States territorial boundaries. Historically, principles of territoriality and nationality have constrained the ability of a sovereign state to prescribe conduct occurring outside of its boundaries. Under traditional principles of jurisdiction, employee relations fell predominantly under the control of the local authorities where the person or persons …

Joint Ventures, Antitrust, And Transnational Cartelization, Walter Adams, James W. Brock

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Joint ventures have fired corporate imaginations and captured the fancy of government officials, who perceive them as key weapons in the struggle to achieve global competitiveness. Characterizing the trend as corporate America's version of the singles bar, Business Week reports that in the current rage for "strategic alliances," scarcely a day passes without the announcement of another cooperative inter-corporate agreement. The London Economist reports that "just as the vogue for aggressive takeovers in America and Britain has come to an end, many of the world's biggest companies are scrambling to sign up joint-venture partners or to conclude an alliance with …

Red Raspberries: Effective Dispute Settlement In The Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement, Thomas M. Boddez, Alan M. Rugman

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

By negotiating the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States, the Canadian government sought to ensure its exporters more secure and predictable access to the huge United States market, where a majority of Canadian foreign trade is conducted. Canadian exporters were especially concerned with the increased imposition of antidumping (AD) and countervailing duties (CVD) by the United States. Trade laws in the United States are effected through the International Trade Commission (ITC) and the International Trade Administration of the Department of Commerce (ITA). These bodies are central to the bifurcated, quasi-judicial administrative system used in the United States to …

The Controls On The Transfrontier Movement Of Hazardous Waste From Developed To Developing Nations: The Goal Of A "Level Playing Field", Michelle M. Vilcheck

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

In the 1970s, the United States Congress began passing national environmental legislation. One reason for such legislation was to "level the playing field" among the fifty states so that economic advantage did not accrue to one state at the expense of environmental quality and public health.' The world now faces a similar need for environmental legislation on an international level. Environmental laws of individual nations have become more and more divergent as developed countries, such as the United States, enact tougher environmental laws, while less developed nations fail to enact any environmental regulations. The variant standards of these environmental laws …

United States Foreign Trade Policy: A Delicate Balancing Act, Robert S. Strauss

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

World trade today involves one-sixth of everything that is grown or manufactured on this planet. Translated into dollars, this amounted to a value last year of one trillion dollars. Of this amount, $150 billion belongs to American agriculture and industry. The enormous stake of the United States in maintaining and encouraging the growth of its exports has led the present Administration to chart an enlightened and courageous trade policy of promoting free and fair trade. Rather than take the politically expedient course of protectionism, this Administration has embarked on the course of lowering barriers to fair trade to ensure the …