Law Commons^™

International Trade And Economic Relations In A Nutshell, 5th Edition, Ralph Folsom, Michael Gordon, John Spanogle, Michael Van Alstine

Michael P. Van Alstine

This guide on international trade and investment examines the legal rules governing international trade. Initial chapters deal with the legal and practical environment for multinational enterprises (MNEs) engaged in international trade and investment. The work then analyzes the principal international institutions involved in international trade: the World Trade Organization (WTO) and International Monetary Fund (IMF); the essential rules governing the regulation of international trade, including in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT); the system for dispute resolution within the WTO under its Dispute Settlement Body (DSB); restrictions on, and other regulation of, imports, including tariff rates, customs classification …

The Who Framework Convention On Tobacco Control As An International Standard Under The Tbt Agreement?, Lukasz A. Gruszczynski

Lukasz A Gruszczynski

In this article Lukasz Gruszczynski argues that there are good grounds for considering the Guidelines to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (‘FCTC’) relevant international standards under the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (‘TBT Agreement’). The structure of the article is as follows: (1) Part I provides an overview of the relevant sections of the TBT Agreement and its ambiguities with respect to defining an international standard; (2) Part II sets out the aims, purpose and governance structure of the FCTC; (3) In light of the overviews of the TBT Agreement and the FCTC, Part III then considers whether …

Re-Tuning Tuna? Appellate Body Report In Us – Tuna Ii, Lukasz A. Gruszczynski

Lukasz A Gruszczynski

Under the TBT Agreement, a labelling requirement can be qualified as a technical regulation, and not as a standard, even if it does not constitute a precondition for placing a product for sale on the relevant market. Examination of “no less favourable treatment” under Article 2.1 requires determining whether a measure modifies the conditions of competition in the relevant market to the detriment of imported like products, and whether such detrimental impact stems exclusively from a legitimate regulatory distinction rather than reflecting discrimination against the group of imported like products. The evaluation of whether a measure is more trade-restrictive than …

Not In It For The Long Run: China's Solution For Compliance With Trips Requires More Than A Nine-Month Campaign, Devon Spencer

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

International Arbitral Appeals: What Are We So Afraid Of? , Erin E. Gleason

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

This article will explore the advantages of instituting appellate mechanisms in investor-state disputes and international commercial arbitration. Part II begins with a review of the WTO Appellate Body's development and workings, followed by an analysis of other appellate procedures for international trade law arbitration, including the MERCOSUR system's Permanent Court and the Grain and Feed Trade Association's appeals process. Part III examines the current methods for reviewing investor-state arbitration awards under ICSID and NAFTA. Part III goes on to advocate for the creation of an Appeals Facility, separate from current arbitral institutions, which would be empowered to hear appeals in …

Dissent As Dialectic: Horizontal And Vertical Disagreement In Wto Dispute Settlement, Meredith Kolsky Lewis

Journal Articles

This article examines the phenomena of dissent within WTO dispute settlement panels and within Appellate Body divisions ("horizontal disagreement") and the failure of certain WTO dispute settlement panels to follow previous rulings of the Appellate Body ("vertical disagreement"). With respect to horizontal disagreement, the article responds to a recent critique of my earlier piece on the subject (The Lack of Dissent in WTO Dispute Settlement, 9 J. INT’L ECON. L. 895 (2006)). With respect to vertical disagreement, the article examines whether there are textual or normative reasons why panels should not disagree with the Appellate Body. It argues that the …

Legal Services In India: Is There An Obligation Under The Gats Or Are There Policy Reasons For India To Open Its Legal Services Market To Foreign Legal Consultants?, Arno L. Eisen

Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business

No abstract provided.

Beyond Labor Rights: Which Core Human Rights Must Regional Trade Agreements Protect?, Stephen Joseph Powell, Trisha Low

Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business

As World Trade Organization (“WTO”) Members relentlessly pursue new regional trade agreements to achieve even faster economic growth than the extraordinary numbers posted by global trade rules, the smaller number of parties and their greater cultural affinity have led negotiators to address the intersection of trade and human rights to an extent unparalleled in the culturally disparate and near-unmanageable, 150-plus member WTO itself. These new provisions have used trade’s huge power to improve worker rights, secure environmental protections, and make initial inroads toward defending indigenous populations from trade’s adverse effects. Employing the perspectives both of trade negotiators and students of …

Looking At Regional Trade Agreements Through The Lens Of Gender, Constance Z. Wagner

All Faculty Scholarship

This article focuses on an unresolved issue within international trade law and policy, namely whether there is a need to consider gender-differentiated impacts of trade agreements and if so, how such impacts should be addressed. The author argues in favor of a gender aware approach to trade, discussing this topic within the context of regional trade agreements (“RTAs”), which are being used increasingly as a route to economic integration among nations. While there is evidence of gender-differentiated impacts of trade liberalization, there has been little progress made in advancing an agenda to address gender issues at the level of multilateral …

The Legal And Economic Principles Of World Trade Law: National Treatment, Gene M. Grossman, Henrik Horn, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

The primary objective of most trade agreements is to restrain members' use of trade policies for protectionist purposes. But it would be pointless to restrict the application of border instruments without regulating the possible use of domestic policies for protectionist purpose. To this end, most agreements include an obligation for National Treatment (NT) of foreign products. The NT provision in the GATT appears in Art. III, which applies to most government actions that have impact trade. It requires that imported products be treated as favorably by domestic policy as similar, indigenous products. This study offers suggestions based on legal and …

Carving Out Policy Autonomy For Developing Countries In The World Trade Organization: The Experience Of Brazil And Mexico, Alvaro Santos

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Although liberal trade and development scholars disagree about the merits of the World Trade Organization (WTO), they both assume that WTO legal obligations restrict states’ regulatory autonomy. This article argues for relaxing this shared assumption by showing that, despite the restrictions imposed by international economic law obligations, states retain considerable flexibility to carve out policy autonomy. The article makes three distinct contributions. First, it analyzes how active WTO members can, through litigation and lawyering, influence rule interpretation to advance their interests. Second, the article redefines the concept of “legal capacity” in the WTO context and introduces the term “developmental legal …

United States--Certain Measures Affecting Imports Of Poultry From China: The Fascinating Case That Wasn't, Donald H. Regan

Articles

US–Poultry (China) was the first Panel decision dealing with an origin-specific SPS measure, or with what the United States referred to as an ‘equivalence regime’. More specifically, it was the first instance in which the basis for the challenged measure was the claimed inability of the complainant country to enforce its own food-safety rules. Unfortunately, as the litigation developed, the very interesting novel issues raised by such a measure were not discussed. This essay discusses those novel issues – in particular, what sort of scientific justification or risk assessment should be required for a measure like this, and what SPS …

Cleared For Landing: Airbus, Boeing, And The Wto Dispute Over Subsidies To Large Civil Aircraft, Jeffrey D. Kienstra

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Competition between Airbus and Boeing in the large civil aircraft industry grew contentious as Airbus began to overtake Boeing in its long-held position as the world‘s leading producer of large civil aircraft. Airbus and Boeing had also each embarked on multi-billion dollar investments into the development of new aircraft, further raising the stakes. The United States and European Communities in turn increasingly scrutinized the subsidies provided by their counterpart to its respective aircraft manufacturer. This conflict over subsidies, which had persisted between the United States and European Communities since the inception of Airbus in 1970, reached a head in 2004 …

Arbitrating Trade Disputes (Who's The Boss?), Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

World Trade Organization (“WTO”) dispute settlement has attracted a lot of interest over the years and there is a plethora of academic papers focusing on various aspects of this system. Paradoxically, there is little known about the identity of the WTO judges: since, at the end of the day, the WTO has evolved into the busiest forum litigating state-to-state disputes. There are many writings regarding the appointment process in other international tribunals. At the risk of doing injustice to many papers on this issue, we should mention the following works: Terris et al. look at various courts and especially those …

One (Firm) Is Not Enough: A Legal-Economic Analysis Of Ec-Fasteners, Chad P. Brown, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

The WTO’s Appellate Body (AB) dealt with a number of issues for the first time in the Report of EC-Fasteners. Importantly, the AB discussed the consistency of the European Union (EU) regulation with the multilateral rules on the conditions for deviating from the obligation to calculate individual dumping margins. Although China formally won the argument, the AB may have opened the door to treat China as a non-market economy (NME) even beyond 2016 when China’s NME-status was thought to expire under the terms of China’s 2001 WTO Accession Protocol. The AB further dealt with numerous other issues ranging from statistical …

China And Sustainable Development In Latin America, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Carmen G. Gonzalez

China’s growing economic engagement with Latin America has sparked both popular and scholarly debate. Some scholars contend that China is a rising imperial power scouring the globe for natural resources, exploiting less powerful nations, and rejecting international environmental agreements that would curb its profligate consumption of the world’s natural resources. Others applaud China’s unorthodox development strategies and portray China as a model worthy of emulation. This article interrogates both narratives and examines the environmental and developmental implications of China’s rise for Latin America. The article discusses China's bilateral trade and investment agreements with Latin American nations and China's potential contributions …

China's Engagement With Latin America: Partnership Or Plunder?, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Carmen G. Gonzalez

The emergence of China as a significant economic force in Latin America has sparked both optimism and alarm. With titles such as 'The Coming China Wars' and 'The Dragon in the Backyard,' recent books and articles depict China as a rising imperial power scouring the globe for natural resources and as a competitive threat to Latin America. Other studies applaud China’s pragmatic, unorthodox development strategies and portray China as a successful model for developing countries. The competing narratives about China’s rise do agree on one thing: China has become a formidable force in the developing world whose influence merits careful …

The Global Food System, Environmental Protection, And Human Rights, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Carmen G. Gonzalez

The global food system is exceeding ecological limits while failing to meet the nutritional needs of a large segment of the world’s population. While law could play an important role in facilitating the transition to a more just and ecologically sustainable food system, the current legal framework fails to regulate food and agriculture in an integrated manner. The international legal framework governing food and agriculture is fragmented into three self-contained regimes that have historically operated in isolation from one another: international human rights law, international environmental law, and international trade law. International trade law has taken precedence over human rights …

Customary Rules Of Interpretation In The Practice Of Wto Dispute Settlement Bodies, Lukasz A. Gruszczynski

Lukasz A Gruszczynski

'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 …