Law Commons^™

Overcoming The Geneva Impasse: How Regional Trade Agreements Can Help Global Trade, Chin Leng Lim

Chin Leng Lim

The World Trade Organisaton’s rules have permitted regional trade agreements since 1947. Over the years its membership has made only half-hearted efforts to tighten these rules. Without ignoring some well-known drawbacks which attend regional trade agreements, we need to understand the reasons for this hesitancy: regional agreements can help global trade.

Injuncting Foreign Sovereigns In Aid Of Arbitration, Chin Leng Lim

Chin Leng Lim

No abstract provided.

The Wages Of Belonging: Rare Earths From China, And The Return Of Gatt À La Carte, Chin Leng Lim, J. H. Senduk

Chin Leng Lim

China has lost the Rare Earths case before a Panel which, however, split 2:1 on whether the Chinese Accession Protocol's general ban on export duties would allow General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Article XX to be invoked. The question affects whether other Recently Acceded Members' (RAMs') WTO-plus terms of accession should generally be read together with the GATT. Export quotas are unproblematic because Article XI is contained in the GATT. China's quota-based conservation measures were however strictly scrutinized, raising other questions about the room RAMs have to invoke Article XX if they might have to depend upon highly …

Regional Trade Agreements And The Poverty Agenda, Chin Leng Lim

Chin Leng Lim

Regional trade agreements (RTAs) comprise customs unions and free trade agreements (FTAs). The difference lies in the absence of a common customs border in the case of customs unions. Thus, countries A and B, which are FTA partners, will nonetheless impose different duties on third-country imports, while at the same time granting preferential treatment to each other. A major criticism is that all RTAs, customs unions and FTAs alike, discriminate against non-parties. In contrast, most favoured nation (MFN) treatment operates in the multilateral system to extend concessions made by any member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to any other …

The Conventional Morality Of Trade, Chin Leng Lim

Chin Leng Lim

This chapter is concerned with the kinds of moral and political arguments that developing countries have made in the name of global justice. Claims for the direct global redistribution of resources have not loomed large in international trade law and regulation. To be sure, they were raised during the failed negotiations for an International Trade Organization (ITO), but the principal tension that has come to the fore in trade law and policy debate is that between the formal rules of nondiscrimination under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the developing countries’ calls for exceptions to those rules. …

'You Don't Miss Your Water 'Til Your River Runs Dry': Regulating Industrial Supply Shortages After 'China-Raw Materials', Chin Leng Lim, J. H. Senduk

Chin Leng Lim

Global industrial production depends on stable access to raw inputs. Food price volatility has emerged as a major concern for Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (G20), while we are hearing new calls for bringing global disciplines to resource cartels like the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Supply chains that make up globalized production recently demonstrated their potential fragility when Chinese sovereign intervention threatened to bring Japan’s high-tech manufacturing to its knees by cutting off its supplies. These wide-ranging issues are now being addressed under the umbrella of trade regulation. As a result, we are …

East Asia’S Engagement With Cosmopolitan Ideals Under Its Trade Treaty Dispute Provisions, Chin Leng Lim

Chin Leng Lim

An East Asian view about how trade dispute settlement systems should be designed is slowly emerging. This paper argues that democratically-inspired trade law scholarship and cultural explanations of the international law behaviour of the Southeast and Northeast Asian trading nations have failed to capture or prescribe the actual treaty behaviour of these nations. Instead, such behaviour has resulted in the emergence of two different treaty models for the peaceful settlement of trade disputes. This article traces the practices of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), together with that of China, Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. We find two …

The Politics Of Competing Jurisdictional Claims In Wto And Rta Disputes, Chin Leng Lim, Henry S. Gao

Chin Leng Lim

On Free Trade And The Post-American World, Chin Leng Lim

Chin Leng Lim

Amongst the small group of technical and diplomatic experts in the GATT/WTO and trade scholars (the “Gattologists”) whose professional preoccupation has been with global tradenegotiations, the decline of American power had been keenly observed and felt even before the demise of the Cold War. This chapter discusses the insights of the trade specialist against the legacy of American free trade. We need to assess where America stood after World War II, where it is today following a series of significant changes in the distribution of power within the GATT/WTO, and America’s responses. Taking a trade policy perspective is useful because …

Withdrawing From Custom And The Paradox Of Consensualism In International Law, Chin Leng Lim, Olufemi Elias

Chin Leng Lim

In their excellent article, Withdrawing from International Custom, Professors Curtis Bradley and Mitu Gulati call into question the prevailing conception of customary international law, according to which states “never have the legal right to withdraw unilaterally from customary law” (the “Mandatory View”). Bradley and Gulati question the intellectual history and functional desirability of the Mandatory View, and they identify “significant uncertainties about how the Mandatory View would work in practice.” Their observations appear to us to be convincing. If the basis of the Mandatory View is not convincing, then its main tenets, such as the absence of a right of …

China And The Doha Development Agenda, Chin Leng Lim, Jiangyu Wang

Chin Leng Lim

The China–Asean Tariff Acceleration Clause, Chin Leng Lim

Chin Leng Lim

Neither Sheep Nor Peacocks: T.O. Elias And Post-Colonial International Law, Chin Leng Lim

Chin Leng Lim

This article takes as its starting point the characterization of T. O. Elias as a representative of a ‘weak’ form of anti-colonial scholarship. Elias had sought to show that the ancient African kingdoms had participated in international legality with European states on an equal footing. The view has arisen in contemporary scholarship that this mode of argumentation is typical of the weak strain, evincing only a continued tendency to underestimate the imperial nature of international law itself. A related criticism is that many Third World scholars like Elias view international law's claim to universality and its ability to be inclusive …

Saving The Wto From The Risk Of Irrelevance: The Wto Dispute Settlement Mechanism As A ‘Common Good’ For Rta Disputes, Henry S. Gao, Chin Leng Lim

Chin Leng Lim

Over the past few decades, Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) have proliferated globally. Such proliferation of RTAs created a renewed sense of urgency for the WTO to take action in order to avoid the fate of being eclipsed into irrelevance. There are several options for coping with the challenge. Theoretically speaking, the best approach would be to heighten the level of ambition in global trade talks to reduce all trade barriers to zero so that the discriminatory effect created by RTAs could be reduced or even eliminated. In reality, such an approach would be impossible for well-known reasons. The next best …

From Constructive Engagement To Collective Revulsion: The Myanmar Precedent Of 2007, Chin Leng Lim

Chin Leng Lim

Twenty years on Myanmar has come full circle, repeating the events of 1988. Myanmar's Saffron Revolution has come to a brutal halt amidst public outrage worldwide. Violent repression, where the State turns its guns on its own citizens, has come into twenty-first century news screens, uniting those university students in the final years of the Cold War with their contemporary successors. ASEAN has issued its most strongly worded statement thus far on the situation in Myanmar in reaction to recent events. What does this recent practice, viewed against ASEAN's previous modus operandi, signify for those who are trying to understand …

The Uses Of Pacific Settlement Techniques In Malaysia-Singapore Relations, Chin Leng Lim

Chin Leng Lim

States are compelled to seek flexibility in the design of their international law-related policies. Malaysia and Singapore are not exceptional in this respect. Both countries appeal to international law not infrequently when presenting their respective foreign policy positions. Both countries are active members of the UN; neither has submitted to the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice but both have resorted to the Court by special agreement. However, while Malaysia’s decisions to litigate the Ligitan and Sipadan issue with Indonesia and to go to court with Singapore over Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh presented relatively little risk, a low-risk …

General Principles Of Law, 'Soft Law' And The Identification Of International Law, Olufemi Elias, Chin Leng Lim

Chin Leng Lim

Treaties and custom are generally regarded as the major sources of international law. They derive their validity more or less directly from the consent of those subjects of the law which also possess the institutional authority to make law. The perceived limitations of the consensual nature of these two sources have resulted in doctrinal controversy concerning, inter alia, the existence of sources of international law which are not essentially consensual. This is the rationale for the inclusion of general principles of law recognised by civilised nations alongside treaties and customary international law in Article 38 of the Statute of the …