International Trade Law Commons^™

Trade Multilateralism And U.S. National Security: The Making Of The Gatt Security Exceptions, Mona Pinchis-Paulsen

Michigan Journal of International Law

Today, there are an unprecedented number of disputes at the World Trade Organization (“WTO”) involving national security. The dramatic rise in trade disputes involving national security has resuscitated debate over the degree of discretion afforded to WTO Members as to when and how to invoke Article XXI, the Security Exception, of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (“GATT”), with binding effect. The goal of this article is to shed light on contemporary questions and concerns involving national security and international trade, particularly questions involving the appropriate invocation of Article XXI GATT, through careful attention to the article’s historical context. …

Danning Zhu, How To Improve China’S Approach To Parallel Imports Of Goods Bearing Trademarks, 19 Uic Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 125 (2020), Danning Zhu

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

Parallel import, also known as grey market goods, refers to the act of importing goods to a country and selling in the country without the permission of the domestic owner of IP vested in the imported goods. The importer can obtain profits through the price differences between parallel imported products and domestic products of the same variety. China and the United States have huge differences in parallel import policies, even though both countries have participated in major international IP treaties. The United States requires that parallel imported goods bearing a genuine trademark or trade name registered in the United States …

The Digital Challenge To International Trade Law, Wentong Zheng

UF Law Faculty Publications

The rise of the Internet and so-called digital trade has significantly transformed international trade. International trade law, however, has lagged behind in regulating the phenomenon. Decades-long negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) over digital trade have largely stalled, while efforts to deal with the issue at the bilateral and regional levels have resulted in inconsistent and fragmented rules. This article discusses the challenges posed by digital trade to international trade law and the best ways to meet those challenges. It contributes to the discourse on digital trade by advocating for a back-to-basics approach. It argues that instead of undertaking …

The Footprint Of The Chinese Petro-Dragon: The Future Of Investment Law In Transboundary Resources, Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez

Faculty Scholarship

Chinese offshore investments in the oil and gas sector around the world are on the rise. Like dragons roaming the seas trying to dominate the tides, Chinese state-owned companies are particularly eager to bid for oil fields in maritime borderlines. The article tells the story of how Chinese state-owned companies are over paying for oil on the US-Mexico boundary to gather experience on how China’s global competitors handle resource development conflicts. My argument is that Chinese participation in transboundary field development fits within a long-term strategy to master international legal regimes. The presence of these petro-dragons in borderlines is an …

Symposium Introduction: Vulnerabilities In The Trade And Investment Regimes In The Age Of Covid-19, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe, Clair Gammage

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This Symposium is one of the follow-up publications to the Afronomicslaw.org Webinar III on “Vulnerability in the Trade and Investment Regime in the Age of COVID-19”

‘Vulnerability’ in trade and investment regimes is not a new phenomenon. Nor, is the concept of ‘crisis’. While IEL scholarship has acknowledged some of the way(s) in which the formalisation of international legal rules in trade and investment can act like a ‘straightjacket’ on global south states, sustaining and creating forms of dependencies that are difficult to escape, there is a notable lack of meaningful engagement with the contours and manifestations of concepts like …

Symposium Introduction: Teaching And Researching International Law – Global Perspectives, James Thuo Gathii, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe, Nthope Mapefane, Titilayo Adebola, Ohio Omiunu

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Welcome to the Teaching and Researching International Law – Global Perspectives Symposium. This series of blog posts gathers perspectives from international law teachers, researchers and students from different regions and all stages of their careers and legal education, to reflect together on common challenges and imagined futures of our profession. This Symposium is held in a moment of great uncertainty – but also of possibility: the Critical Pedagogy Symposium recently held on Opinio Juris offered thought-provoking commentary from across the globe on critical international pedagogy and the virtual space, while the forthcoming TWAILR series on Critique and the Canon promises …

Africa’S Participation In International Economic Law In The 21st Century: An Introduction, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe, Ohio Omiunu, Amaka Vanni, Regis Y. Simo, Luwam Dirar

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This is the introduction to the Manchester Journal of International Economic Law Symposium Issue based on selected papers presented at the Fourth Biennial Conference of the African International Economic Law Network at Strathmore Law School, Nairobi, Kenya in July 2019. The introduction also reflects on four important spaces for the consolidation of the scholarship, teaching and research, practice and policy relating to international economic law in Africa.

Theorizing Developmental Regionalism In Narratives Of African Regional Trade Agreements (Rtas), Olabisi D. Akinkugbe

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

There is a gap in the legal scholarship on African regional trade agreements (RTAs) that links law and development to narratives of developmental regionalism. This article addresses the gap by making the case for an explicit linking of Law and Development scholarship and Developmental Regionalism in African RTAs.

First, the article argues that the cross- pollination of the fields provides an opportunity for a more rigorous understanding of developmental regionalism in African RTAs. Second, the article that developmental regionalism as an analytical tool responds to and encapsulates the multidimensional character of African RTAs. Third, the article argues for a more …

Doing Development Differently: Reorienting Sino-African Trade And Investment Relations After The Pandemic, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe, Clair Gammage

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article explores the evolutive nature of Sino-African relations and questions how Chinese interventions may influence Africa’s development stories in a post-Covid world. We examine whether the crisis could serve as a catalyst for reorienting the strategic partnership between China and Africa away from debt diplomacy towards genuine partnership or a breaking apart of the long-standing relationship. This article presents three narratives to illustrate how the future direction of Sino-African relations may change and how this might enable Africa to ‘do development differently’.

Covid-19 And South-South Trade & Investment Cooperation: Three Emerging Narratives, Clair Gammage, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the frailties of economic relations across different aspects of the globalized network. From the national, through the sub-regional, to the regional to the international levels, questions have arisen regarding the seemingly interconnected, yet fractured socio-economic relationships in our modern societies. In this essay we shall focus on the trade and investment dimension of South-South relations that have been affected by the pandemic. In doing so, we shall reveal the (often overlooked or taken for granted) linkages with race in South-South relations. We identify the way(s) in which the Covid-19 pandemic has made obvious the latent …

The Perils Of Pandemic Exceptionalism, Julian Arato, Kathleen Claussen, J. Benton Heath

Articles

In response to the pandemic, most states have enacted special measures to protect national economies and public health. Many of these measures would likely violate trade and investment disciplines unless they qualify for one of several exceptions. This Essay examines the structural implications of widespread anticipated defenses premised on the idea of “exceptionalism.” It argues that the pandemic reveals the structural weakness of the exceptions-oriented paradigm of justification in international economic law.

Implementing User Rights For Research In The Field Of Artificial Intelligence: A Call For International Action, Sean Flynn, Christophe Geiger, João Pedro Quintais, Thomas Margoni, Matthew Sag, Lucie Guibault, Michael W. Carroll

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

Last year, before the onset of a global pandemic highlighted the critical and urgent need for technology-enabled scientific research, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) launched an inquiry into issues at the intersection of intellectual property (IP) and artificial intelligence (AI). We contributed comments to that inquiry, with a focus on the application of copyright to the use of text and data mining (TDM) technology. This article describes some of the most salient points of our submission and concludes by stressing the need for international leadership on this important topic. WIPO could help fill the current gap on international leadership, …

Why Ricardo's Theory Of Comparative Advantage Regarding Foreign Trade Doesn't Work In Today's Global Economy, Charles W. Murdock

Faculty Publications & Other Works

The theoretical basis for international trade is Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage. Paul Samuelson, one of the leading lights in the economics profession in the 20th century, referred to it as one of the most beautiful ideas in economics. Yet, no one seems to have considered its validity in the context of the current global trade environment.

What free-trade advocates have not done is to look at the bases underlying Ricardo’s theory, namely, that capital is loyal to the country of origin and that the value of currencies is responsive to imbalances in trade. This article demonstrates that capital is …

Development Disasters: Accountability And Remedy In International Development Projects, Kate E. Morrow

American University Law Review

International development projects have a history of creating problems on the ground. Debates about the benefits of top-down development, the need for community buy-in, and the importance of community participation in development have been ongoing and have focused on how to prevent environmental and social harms to local communities. More recently, the conversation has shifted to focus more on the importance of providing remedy for harms, with a focus on development finance institutions (DFIs). DFIs have embraced internal, independent mechanisms to provide a process for accountability when a community suffers harms, but those mechanisms are not externally enforceable. They rely …

Are Data Privacy Laws Trade Barriers?, Margot Kaminski

Publications

No abstract provided.

Taming America's Sugar Rush: A Traffic-Light Label Approach, Alexia Brunet Marks

Publications

Excess added sugar negatively impacts health and can lead to a litany of problems, such as diet-related chronic diseases, e.g., diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and obesity, costing Americans millions in rising medical bills each year. Even more, new studies reveal that individuals with these underlying chronic diseases are at a higher risk of complications from COVID-19 and other viruses compared to those who are deemed healthy. And yet added sugars are difficult to avoid because unlike naturally occurring sugars found in fruits, vegetables, and milk, these sweeteners are added during food processing and preparation.

The problem is that while consumers …

Insulating A Wto Investment Facilitation Framework From Isds, George A. Bermann, N. Jansen Calamita, Manjiao Chi, Karl P. Sauvant

Faculty Scholarship

The authors identify several ways in which a WTO investment facilitation framework for development can be insulated from investor-state dispute settlement provisions in international investment agreements, and suggest specific formulations in this respect.

Competition Between State Courts And Private Tribunals, Horst Eidenmüller

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

In this essay, I investigate the competition between state courts and private tribunals for dispute resolution. I distinguish between different market segments: business to business ("B2B") and business to consumer ("B2C") transactions and, in each case, small-, mediumand high-stakes disputes. The analysis is informed by a survey of the dispute resolution preferences of "case placers" carried out in 2015. I find that competition between state courts and arbitral tribunals is currently most intense with respect to high-stakes B2B disputes. A significant portion of the total dispute resolution volume in this market segment goes to arbitration. If parties decide to arbitrate, …

Nations And Markets, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

Economics and security seem increasingly intertwined. Citing national security, states subject foreign investments to new scrutiny, even unwinding mergers like the purchase of Grindr or the creation of TikTok. The provision of 5G has become a diplomatic battleground – Huawei at its center. Meanwhile, states invoke national security to excuse trade wars. The U.S. invoked the GATT national security exception to impose steel and aluminum tariffs, threatening more on automotive parts. Russia invoked that provision to justify its blockade of Ukraine, as did Saudi Arabia and the UAE to excuse theirs of Qatar. And with the spread of COVID-19, states …

Global Investor-Director Survey On Climate Risk Management, Jens Frankenreiter, Kristin Bresnahan, Sophie L'Helias, Brea Hinricks, Nina Hodzic, Julian Nyarko, Sneha Pandya, Eric Talley

Scholarship@WashULaw

Changes in the global climate are having profound impacts on business operations, governance, and organizational management around the world. Boards of directors are searching for ways to account for these changes as they help guide their organizations, and investors are increasingly concerned about how these changes might impact their portfolios. This global survey, conducted by a team of researchers at the Ira M. Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership at Columbia Law School and experts at LeaderXXchange, seeks to understand how — if at all — institutional investors and board directors incorporate climate-related issues in their investment decision …