Law Commons^™

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

UF Law Faculty Publications

While scholars and governments alike view the liberalization of international trade as a positive development, they disagree on the medium that will 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 the "new regionalism," our paper explores in detail the positive and negative effects of regional trade arrangements …

Limiting Anticompetitive Government Interventions That Benefit Special Interests, D. Daniel Sokol

UF Law Faculty Publications

When government regulates, it may either intentionally or unintentionally generate restraints that reduce competition ("public restraints"). Public restraints allow a business to cloak its action in government authority and to immunize it from antitrust regulation. Private businesses may misuse the government's grant of antitrust immunity to facilitate behavior that benefits businesses at consumers' expense. One way is by obtaining government grants of immunity from antitrust scrutiny. A recent series of Supreme Court decisions has made this situation worse by limiting the reach of antitrust law in favor of sector regulation. This is true even though the Supreme Court refers to …