International Trade Law Commons^™

A Critical Examination Of "Decoupling": An Introduction, Dongsheng Zang, Miles Lee

Washington International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Japan's Response To The Trade Conflict Between The United States And China, Rikako Watai

Washington International Law Journal

Abstract: Decoupling refers to the strategy of separating and disconnecting economies and markets between different nations. However, in the contest of the ongoing trade conflict between the United States and China, decoupling primarily refers to determining economic dependence on a specific nation as a national security risk, thereby reinforcing vulnerabilities in one’s supply chain. Japan views the United States as its primary partner in national security policy and China as a significant market because of its geographic proximity. As a result, ensuring economic security became a pressing concern for Japan.

Japan refers to the United States’ idea of economic …

Is India The "New China" In U.S. Foreign Policy?, Sital Kalantry

Washington International Law Journal

Abstract: The University of Washington International Law Journal’s timely symposium explores the strains in the U.S.-China political and economic relationship. As China and the United States become estranged, or “decoupled,” this essay explores the United States’ relationship with India in light of this trend. The U.S.-India foreign relations are stronger today than they have been in India’s 75-year history as an independent nation.[1] To understand why this is the case, we have to examine both the U.S. and Indian foreign policy perspectives. The United States’ interest in India has grown in part due to the United States’ own …

Bidenomics Versus Maganomics: Pick Your Poison, Thomas Schoenbaum

Washington International Law Journal

Abstract: This essay compares the international trade policies of the two candidates for U.S. President in 2024, Joseph Biden[1] and Donald Trump, and argues in favor of a “third way” alternative to promote free trade in 2025 and onward. I first analyze the trade law revolution effected by the Trump presidency from 2017-2021. During these years the Trump administration adopted a protectionist policy rooted in nationalism and populism. As a direct result of Trump administration trade policy there occurred: (1) a significant retreat from globalization; (2) paralysis of the World Trade Organization; (3) a revival of U.S. unilateralism …

Decoupling Defined: Four Theories And Four Illustrations From The Sino-American Trade War, Raj Bhala

Washington International Law Journal

Abstract: This article seeks to bring clarity to a much used, yet ill-defined, term “decoupling.” The article explores the theory and practice of “decoupling” in the context of the Sino-American Trade War, which, launched in March 2018, shows no sign of a ceasefire. As to theory, this article argues that conceptually, “decoupling” takes (at least) four forms. There is efficiency, jurisprudential, security, and values decoupling. As to practice, this article shows these four theoretical typologies of decoupling are obvious today. This theory and practice are illustrated (respectively) with respect to labor-intensive industries, commercial transactions in rule-of-man jurisdictions or …

Imperial Collision: Future Of China's Relations With Russia, Dongsheng Zang

Washington International Law Journal

Abstract: In April 2024, Biden Administration officials revealed that in the year 2023, about 90% of Russia’s microelectronics came from China, which Russia has used to make missiles, tanks, and aircraft. Nearly 70% of Russia’s approximately $900 million in machine tool imports in the last quarter of 2023 also came from China.[1] U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently stated at the G7 meeting that “[w]e see China sharing machine tools, semiconductors, [and] other dual-use items that have helped Russia rebuild the defense industrial base.”[2] This demonstrates how far China is willing to go in defiance of the …

China's Response To The U.S. Call For Decoupling: The Foreign Investment Law Of 2020, Daniel C. Chow

Washington International Law Journal

Abstract: In response to the U.S.’s calls for U.S.-China decoupling by repatriating U.S. business operations and eschewing new investments in China, China introduced the Foreign Investment Law (“FIL”) in 2020. The FIL marks a new era of foreign investment in China. It eliminates the requirement of prior government approval for all foreign-funded enterprises, including joint ventures consisting of U.S. companies and domestic Chinese state-owned enterprises. Many U.S. companies found the approval process under the previous legal regime to be time consuming, arduous, and oppressive. This process has now been replaced by a simple registration process under the FIL and the …

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie: A Comparative Analysis Of The Dormant Commerce Clause And Internal Trade Barrier Mitigation, Naman Patel

Washington Law Review

The Dormant Commerce Clause jurisprudence of the United States has been one of the most widely criticized doctrines of American constitutional law. However, most of these criticisms fail to consider the economic implications of the Dormant Commerce Clause, namely the benefits this doctrine has provided in facilitating internal free trade amongst the states. This Comment argues that the Dormant Commerce Clause has given American courts an effective tool to promote interstate free trade by removing state regulations that create non-tariff barriers to trade. To support this assertion, this Comment utilizes a comparative constitutional analysis to examine how the constitutional systems …

Dangers Of Protectionism In Free Trade, Jacob Walker

Washington International Law Journal

The recent establishment of large mega-free trade agreements has led to the potential for the rapid economic development of nations through the inclusion of provisions that lower tariff rates on goods crossing borders. Some countries, such as India, have shied away from these agreements in favor of protectionist strategies, which has led to inconsistencies in treaty negotiations and economic decline. India used protectionist strategies as part of its domestic plan, which has led it to withdraw from free trade agreements and weakened its regional partnerships. This comment examines the Foreign Direct Investment flowing into India before and after its withdrawal …

The Cape Town Convention's International Registry: Decoding The Secrets Of Success In Global Electronic Commerce, Jane K. Winn

Articles

The International Registry, established pursuant to the Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment, is a new global electronic commerce system for recording and establishing the relative priority of interests in aircraft equipment. Other examples of global electronic commerce systems include the airline computer reservation system, the SWIFT financial network, and payment card networks.

The International Registry may be the most successful global electronic commerce system ever built in terms of the speed with which it was implemented, its adoption rate, and the dearth of controversy surrounding its operation. The real "driver" of its success is demand for …

The Neoliberal Turn In Regional Trade Agreements, James Thuo Gathii

Washington Law Review

This Article makes two primary arguments. First, that the increased resort to bilateral and regional trade agreements has taken a neoliberal turn. As such bilateral and regional trade agreements are now a primary means through which greater investor protections, commodification of social services, guaranteed rights of investor access to investment opportunities, privatization of public service goods, and generally the diminution of sovereign control are being realized. These trade agreements make the foregoing goals possible not just in developing countries, but in industrialized economies as well. I show that these agreements provide business interests with opportunities to exercise concerted pressure to …

Divided By Common Language: ‘Capture’ Theories In Gatt/Wto And The Communicative Impasse, Dongsheng Zang

Articles

This article tries to present an analytic framework for the understanding of WTO's failure in the Doha Round negotiations.

Caveat Emptor: How Cafta Imperils State Recycled Paper Procurement Preferences, Ben Stafford

Washington Law Review

The federal government's use of its control over foreign commerce increasingly conflicts with powers reserved to the states. Article 9 of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) establishes requirements by which government agencies must abide in procuring goods and services. Specifically, CAFTA Article 9 establishes that procuring entities must afford "national treatment" to goods imported from other CAFTA nations by treating such foreign goods at least as favorably as similar domestic goods. The federal government reached an agreement wherein a number of states became bound by these rules, including fourteen states with state statutes related to governmental procurement preferences …

Caveat Emptor: How Cafta Imperils State Recycled Paper Procurement Preferences, Ben Stafford

Washington Law Review

The federal government's use of its control over foreign commerce increasingly conflicts with powers reserved to the states. Article 9 of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) establishes requirements by which government agencies must abide in procuring goods and services. Specifically, CAFTA Article 9 establishes that procuring entities must afford "national treatment" to goods imported from other CAFTA nations by treating such foreign goods at least as favorably as similar domestic goods. The federal government reached an agreement wherein a number of states became bound by these rules, including fourteen states with state statutes related to governmental procurement preferences …

Can China Promote Electronic Commerce Through Law Reform? Some Preliminary Case Study Evidence, Jane K. Winn, Song Yuping

Articles

The government of the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) has announced its intention to make China a global leader in innovation by 2020. Many Chinese business leaders share this goal. The primary focus of this national strategy is to transform China into an exporter of high-technology products based on Chinese designs rather than merely a low cost, high volume manufacturer of products based on technology developed in other countries.

This paper will examine the implications for this strategy with regard to the use of computerized management information systems by Chinese businesses, and its relationship to recent law reform efforts intended …

Cnooc-Unocal And The Wto: Discriminatory Rules In The China Protocol Are A Latent Threat To The Rule Of Law In The Dispute Settlement Understanding, Thomas P. Holt

Washington International Law Journal

In the summer of 2005, the Chinese state-owned oil company CNOOC, Ltd. (“CNOOC”) attempted to purchase American-owned Unocal Corporation on very favorable terms. There was a serious problem with the merger, however—the U.S. Congress was not about to let the People’s Republic of China (“China”) buy up an American company, no matter how much it was willing to pay. Following a period of increasingly heated rhetoric about the deal, the U.S. Congressman representing competitor Chevron Corporation’s home district inserted a provision in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that was intended to, and did, scuttle the deal. The U.S. Congress’ …

Textualism In Gatt/Wto Jurisprudence: Lessons For The Constitutionalization Debate, Dongsheng Zang

Articles

Today, the World Trade Organization (WTO) jurisprudence is subject to tremendous controversy, the WTO panels' or Appellate Body's interpretation of a WTO text is often heatedly debated; and yet, there seems not much attention paid to the general methodology of interpretation in the practice of the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) and WTO jurisprudence, even in a recent debate over constitutionalization between Petersmann and his critics. In rejecting his human rights approach to constitutionalization, Petersmann's critics, rightfully, warn him that he has failed to appreciate the complex relations between human rights and free trade in the history of …

Bartering With A Nation's Health Or Improving Access To Pharmaceuticals? The United States-Australia Free Trade Agreement, Katherine M. Van Maren

Washington International Law Journal

Providing access to affordable medicines and rewarding innovation produces a difficult tension in the global economy. Different nations deal with this tension differently, as illustrated by the United States-Australia Free Trade Agreement ("U.S.-Australia FTA") negotiations. Both nations stood to benefit greatly from reduced or eliminated tariffs. During negotiations, both nations sought to capitalize on the opportunity to alter certain practices that hindered trade. One such practice was Australia's fifty-five-year-old Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme ("PBS"). The PBS controls prices for most medicines within Australia. Australian consumers are concerned that the U.S.-Australia FTA will adversely affect access to affordable medicines because free trade …

Cambodia's Wto Accession: A Strenuous But Necessary Step For A Poor Nation Seeking Economic Prosperity, Rebecca Povarchuk

Washington International Law Journal

During the 2003 World Trade Organization ("WTO") Ministerial Conference, Cambodia became the first least-developed nation to accede to the WTO through the organization's full working party accession process. Due to domestic, political, and economic pressures to accede, Cambodia agreed to an arduous package of legal and economic reform that have left many, including Cambodian officials, wondering whether the small country is capable of meeting its obligations. Having plunged into the WTO with the belief that accession is its best hope for a prosperous future, Cambodia now faces the challenges of implementation. In arguing against WTO membership for Cambodia, critics condemn …

Catfish Wars: Vietnam's Fight For Free Trade In The U.S. Court Of International Trade, Amalia R. Walton

Washington International Law Journal

Since the end of the Vietnam War, relations between the United States and Vietnam have been largely based on trade, causing both cooperation and conflict. Beginning in the 1990s, economic exchange between the two nations was encouraged through the 1994 lifting of the post-war trade embargo, the 1998 waiver of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, and the signing of the U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement in 2000. Vietnam's successful catfish industry was born of this cooperation but, soon after the U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement went into effect, became the source of international controversy. U.S. catfish farmers responded to competition from lower-priced Vietnamese catfish …

Emerging Issues In Electronic Contracting, Technical Standards And Law Reform, Jane K. Winn

Articles

The explosive growth of electronic commerce transactions in recent years has added fuel to efforts to harmonize international commercial law. Organizations such as the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT), the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) and the Hague Conference on Private International Law are all participating in an emerging global debate concerning the changes that should be made to the form or substance of international commercial law to accommodate innovation in the technology of international trade.

Many of the important legal issues raised by cross-border electronic commerce in the 1970s and 1980s have …

Who Owns The Customer? The Emerging Law Of Commercial Transactions In Electronic Customer Data, Jane Kaufman Winn, James R. Wrathall

Articles

The Information Revolution is changing the way commerce acted and value is defined within transactions. Before the Internet and "e-business" took center stage, "electronic commerce" meant electronic data interchange, just-in-time inventory systems, supply chain automation, and corporate reengineering.

But the rise of the Internet as a communications medium has coincided with a shift in management focus, from merely trying to improve the efficiency of business logistics systems to a more holistic perspective on improving customer relationships. Intangible assets such as intellectual property rights, human capital in the form of employee knowledge, and established relationships with customers and suppliers are playing …

Comparing Apples To Oranges: Lessons From The Failure Of U.S. Apple Exports To Japan, Dustin R. Klinger

Washington International Law Journal

In 1994, the United States and Japan agreed to permit reciprocal fresh apple imports after decades of negotiations. However, U.S. apple exports to Japan were a commercial failure. Initial sales peaked in 1995, then quickly declined, and no U.S. apples have been shipped to Japan since 1997. The United States blames unfair regulations for this failure. This Comment reviews the history of the U.S.-Japan apple dispute, analyzes Japan's apple import regulations, and concludes that those regulations aggravated, but did not cause the commercial failure of U.S. apple exports to Japan. Instead, U.S. apple exports failed because of unexpected price competition …

Cultural Differences In The Crusade Against International Bribery: Rice-Cake Expenses In Korea And The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Joongi Kim, Jong Bum Kim

Washington International Law Journal

The expanding global movement against overseas bribery has emerged as one of the foremost issues in international trade. This paper explores the complex issues surrounding this multilateral anti-bribery movement, particularly focusing on one of the central concerns at the heart of this debate: what type of different cultural perspectives and legal traditions exists regarding questionable payments and whether they need to be respected. This study approaches this subject by discussing how the Korean legal system distinguishes between permissible gifts such as "rice-cake expenses" and illicit payments. In the process, the new legal interpretations that were developed by the Korean judiciary …

Appellate Body Interpreptation Of The Wto Agreement: A Critique In Light Of Japan—Taxes On Alcoholic Beverages, Ramón R. Gupta

Washington International Law Journal

In Japan—Taxes on Alcoholic Beverages, the Appellate Body of the WTO upheld the conclusions of a Panel report finding Japan's Liquor Tax Law in violation of Article Ill of the GATT 1994. Considering that Japan has agreed to comply with the ruling, the Appellate Body seems to have successfully dealt with the issue. Yet analysis of the case brings to question the Appellate Body's interpretations of law. Though the dispute settlement procedures of the WTO resulted from recognition of a need for predictability and security in international trade law, the Appellate Body's interpretations fail to provide such law. As …

Rules Of Origin For Textiles: Implementing Legislation For Gatt, Janice Wingo

Washington International Law Journal

This Comment discusses the changes in the rules of origin for textiles that were implemented after the United States joined the World Trade Organization. The changes were made in such a way as to protect U.S. domestic textile production from Chinese competition even though these changes were couched in terms of harmonizing U.S. customs regulations with those of the rest of the world.

Introduction. Competition And Trade Policy: Europe, Japan And The United States, John O. Haley

Washington International Law Journal

With the successful conclusion of the Uruguay Round of negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the focus of international trade concern has shifted from elimination of formal, governmentally imposed trade barriers to complex, and often contradictory, interrelationships among national and regional competition and trade policies. The promise of future negotiations under the aegis of the new World Trade Organization on competition (antitrust) policy as a trade issue thus brings us full circle. The GATT was itself the product of extensive planning within the United States Department of State for the postwar international economy. An effective international competition …

Export Cartels And Voluntary Export Restraints Between Trade And Competition Policy, Ulrich Immenga

Washington International Law Journal

This article discusses the conflicts between trade regulation and competition policy. It begins with a survey of the effect of restrictive practices—particularly those like export cartels that are exempted from competition law regulation—and continues with a critique of national support and authorization for restrictive practices as well as protective state activities, including antidumping rules, rules against "unfair" trade practices, and voluntary export restraints. The article concludes with a summary of unilateral, bilateral, and multilateral approaches to a more effective international regime for competition policy. It also introduces the recommendation for a Draft International Antitrust Code, which was submitted to GATT.

An Antitrust Remedy For International Price Predation: Lessons From Zenith V. Matsushita, Harry First

Washington International Law Journal

The purpose of this article is to articulate a set of rules for an antitrust cause of action against international predatory pricing. The article develops these rules in the context of the antitrust and trade litigation brought in the United States and Japan against the Japanese televisions manufacturers between 1956 and 1986. The thesis of this article is that the litigation illustrates that antitrust enforcement should concentrate on exclusion from the home market rather than on low prices in the target market. The article also argues that antitrust should encompass a concern with the strategic use of market power to …

Competition Law And The Agenda For The Wto: Forging The Links Of Competition And Trade, Eleanor M. Fox

Washington International Law Journal

The Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is complete, and the agenda for the next round is being formulated. It is widely expected that issues of competition, the environment, and possibly labor will be on the agenda for the next round of the GATT. This article examines why it is that the world trading agenda may be thus expanding. Specifically as to competition law, it examines the history of devising world competition rules, the wisdom of revisiting the enterprise of doing so, and alternative approaches to competition in the GATT agenda. The article concludes with a …