Civil society perspectives on EU–ASIA free trade agreements

This paper focuses on the positions taken by civil society organisations that actively campaign on trade policies. Trade campaigners oppose the neo-liberal approach to trade and development and advocate a much more gradual and prudent approach to trade liberalisation. They stress that trade liberalisation will only lead to sustainable development if it respects environmental and social concerns, including the gender dimension of trade; if trade liberalisation is properly owned, prepared and sequenced; adapted to the institutional and economic needs and capacities of the countries and people involved, and accompanied by all necessary flanking measures. Trade campaigners stress the need to maintain policy space and the necessary governance instruments to react to changing circumstances and address social and environmental concerns. They denounce the lack of information, consultation and participation provided by governments in trade policy formulation and negotiations and they campaign to raise awareness and create more room for debate and participation. This article builds on a paper presented on 19-20 June 2008 at an UNU-CRIS Work Shop in Bruges on “Deep Integration and North-South Free Trade Agreements. EU Strategy for a Global Economy”.

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The GATS and financial services: the role of regulatory transparency

The World Trade Organization (WTO) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and its Annex on Financial Services provide the international legal framework for the regulation of cross-border trade in financial services. This paper analyses the main provisions of the GATS that relate to regulatory transparency of trade in financial services. The GATS generally provides a flexible framework for states to negotiate liberalisation commitments while providing WTO members with autonomy to promote their regulatory objectives. The extent to which states, however, must adhere to GATS disciplines regarding transparent regulatory practices has become a source of policy debate. Although the WTO has played no role in setting financial regulatory standards, the transparency obligations of the GATS have important implications for how financial regulators can achieve their objectives. Moreover, GATS transparency obligations can potentially create disproportionate administrative costs for developing countries and thus undermine their financial sector development. The paper argues that the principles of regulatory transparency in the GATS should be interpreted in a way that favours regulatory discretion to achieve financial stability and other prudential objectives. In the post-Doha era, WTO members should attempt to clarify GATS transparency obligations in a way that promotes financial development and regulatory autonomy.     

Environmental effects of GATT/WTO membership: an empirical evaluation

ABSTRACT

One of the great questions for scholars of international relations and economics concerns the relationship between the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the natural environment. Does membership in the multilateral trade regime constrain environmental regulation and increase the environmental burden of national economies? Do countries pay a heavy environmental price for trade liberalization? Although this question has been debated extensively, there is little statistical evidence to contribute the debate. We provide a comprehensive statistical analysis of the environmental effects of joining the multilateral trade regime. We collected data on a variety of environmental policies, institutions, and outcomes that should be influenced by the General Agreementon Tariffs and Trade (GATT)/WTO membership if the predictions of environmental pessimists or optimists are valid. A wide range of statistical models designed to identify the causal effect of the GATT/WTO on the environmental indicators shows that joining the GATT/WTO does not have negative effects on environmental quality.     

Environmental aspects in free trade agreements in the Asia-Pacific region

The trade and environment interface has become a topic of growing importance. Until the early 1990s, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its successor, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), were the major forums to address the relationship between trade and the environment. Significant progress in this area has not yet been made. Since the 1990s, environmental issues have been addressed by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and in recent times by trans-regional and bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) such as the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (SEP), the U.S.–Singapore FTA (USSFTA), the Canada–Chile FTA or the New Zealand–Thailand Closer Economic Partnership Agreement (CEP). Not only questions on the effectiveness of FTAs in global and regional environmental governance arise but also on the various actors involved in these negotiations. The question here is whether the integration of environmental issues in FTAs is a top-down approach, leaving the negotiations and implementation of environment cooperation frameworks in the hands of governments, or whether environmental arrangements are the result of a multi-stakeholder dialogue, consequently committing governments, the private sector and civil society to the objective of making trade and environmental policies mutually supportive. This article seeks to address these questions by analysing environmental issues and stakeholder participation in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Trans-Pacific SEP and the New Zealand–Thailand CEP.

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Trade liberalisation,rural poverty,and the environment: global discussions and local cases

Much has been researched and said about the impacts of international trade liberalisation at the country level; but little is known about its social and environmental local-level impacts. Since national averages can mask the existence of winners and losers, national-level studies may be a poor guide to addressing the plight of the rural poor and the environment that are at the core of the agenda of the social and conservation movement. This article compares the international trade-liberalisation debate with the findings of local rural-based case studies in seven countries, co-ordinated by WWF and the World Bank during 2004–2007. It discusses some actions that the conservation and social movement could take to improve the discussion and the practice of trade liberalisation, poverty alleviation, and environmental conservation.     

The most-favored nation rule in principle and practice: Discrimination in the GATT

The conflicts of interest that prevailed between the great powers in the wake of the First World War eviscerated their ability to respond collectively to the advent of the Great Depression. Instead, each turned to discriminatory trade barriers and trade blocs to try to revive domestic output. Persuaded that trade discrimination exacerbated the political tensions that erupted in World War II, policy makers constructed a postwar economic order that institutionalized nondiscrimination. Thus, Article 1 of the charter of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) mandates most-favored nation (MFN) treatment. We argue here that the MFN clause itself encouraged the adoption of practices and policies that actually recreated discrimination. In particular, we argue, developing countries, long regarded as victims of discrimination, institutionalized it in their negotiations with each other. We examine two developing country PTAs that included about 80 percent of all developing-country GATT members by output (the Global System of Trade Preferences and the Protocol Relating to Trade Negotiations). We show that as in the GATT writ large, their patterns of tariff cuts and trade expansion were highly skewed toward a small number of their largest members. In trying to avoid discrimination, policy makers actually encouraged its de facto adoption.     

Alliances,Trade Discrimination,and the Global Trade Regime

Although nondiscrimination is a central tenet of the global trade regime, discrimination was in fact common under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, particularly against developing countries. The latter have recently sought to end such discrimination through World Trade Organization rules: for example, the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) prohibited quota discrimination in this sector. I examine the ATC's impact on US discrimination, asking whether the ATC ended the US policy of favoring allies with generous textile and clothing quotas. I find that, while the United States favored allies before the ATC, this favoritism vanished in the post-ATC period. The ATC thus accomplished its goal of ending explicit textile and clothing discrimination. This result underscores the potential for multilateral rules to control trade discrimination and implies that popular theories of trade policy may be contingent on such rules.     

老挝加入世界贸易组织面临的机遇和挑战

2012年10月26日,在瑞士日内瓦举行的世界贸易组织总理事会会议上,老挝被正式批准加入世界贸易组织（WTO）,成为其第158个成员国。老挝是东盟国家中最贫穷的国家之一,也是东盟国家中最后一个加入世界贸易组织的国家。加入世界贸易组织为老挝经济发展带来了机遇,也迎来了挑战,但机遇大于挑战。     

The political economy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership: a US perspective

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), signed in February 2016, is the most ambitious free trade deal of the postwar era. The 12 TPP countries account for nearly 40 percent of the world's economy. Coupled with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership—which is still being negotiated between the United States and the European Union—the TPP represents an attempt by the Obama Administration to lead in promoting regional trade and investment arrangements despite the failure of the Doha Round to reach a comprehensive global trade deal under the auspices of the World Trade Organization. Although the agreement among the 12 TPP countries has been reached, ratification by their legislatures is pending. Ratification by the US Congress remains uncertain due to complex economic and political factors in the United States, including the presidential election of 2016.     

Donor leverage: towards more equitable access to essential medicines?

In early 2007, the Indonesian government decided to withhold its samples of the avian influenza (‘bird flu’) virus from WHO's collaborating centres, pending a new global mechanism for virus sharing which would provide better terms for developing countries. The 60^th World Health Assembly held in May 2007 subsequently resolved to establish an international stockpile of avian influenza vaccines, and to formulate mechanisms for equitable access to these vaccines. The article asks whether there are there analogous opportunities for study volunteers or donors of biological materials to exercise corresponding leverage to advance health equity.     

International institutions and market expectations: Stock price responses to the WTO ruling on the 2002 U.S. steel tariffs

Many scholars assert that international institutions have little power to enforce laws, punish offenders, or force compliance. Others stress that international institutions are important actors, specifically in the regulation of international trade. In this paper, I show that the recent trade dispute over U.S. steel protection provides us with a critical case to evaluate the role of the World Trade Organization in settling trade disputes and specifically stabilizing expectations of market actors over future steel policy. I argue that stock prices can serve as an important tool in answering these questions. In an empirical analysis using daily steel stock prices, I find that during the 2002 WTO steel case, the WTO dispute mechanism helped market actors stabilize expectations of future trade policy.

论美国关税法的演变

自 1789年第 1部关税法颁布以来,贸易保护主义一直是贯穿于美国关税及贸易法案中的主线。从1828年的可憎关税法至 1930年的斯慕特—霍利关税法,美国顽固地推行高关税政策。即使南北战争前的一段低关税时期,也只具有相对的意义。1934年的互惠贸易协定法使关税不再通过立法的形式表现出来,而是由总统与他国的贸易谈判来确立。但国会在贸易上的立法权直接决定了总统在谈判中的关税底线。从这个意义上讲,贸易法取代了关税法。在第二次世界大战结束后,虽然美国大力倡导自由多边贸易政策,但互惠贸易协定法的局限性使之黯然失色。     

Emerging Powers in the World Trading System: Contestation of the Developing Country Status and the Reproduction of Inequalities

ABSTRACT

This article investigates discursive struggles over the boundaries of the categorisation of developing countries in the world trade regime. A key principle of the World Trade Organization (WTO) grants special rights to the group of developing countries. Recently, it has become highly contested whether emerging economies such as China can legitimately claim to belong to the group of developing countries. This article uncovers how old and new economic powers have tried to strategically (re)frame the boundaries of the developing country categorisation in the WTO. I argue that ongoing contestation reproduces inequalities because many developing countries are unwittingly negatively affected by the lack of formal criteria for classifying emerging economies—even if emerging economies themselves may benefit. In doing so, I illustrate how informal practices of classification may undermine the original intention of categorisation in International Organizations that aims to address inequality among its members.     

The Political Economy of Developing Country Antidumping Investigations against China

This article draws on industry-level data to analyze the political economy of the use of the antidumping statute by 10 less developed countries (LDCs) against China. Test results suggest that Chinese import competition is an important factor explaining the pattern of LDC antidumping initiation against China. Macroeconomic factors such as gross domestic product growth rate also play some role in influencing the pattern of LDC antidumping determination against China. Importantly, statistical analyses did not yield any evidence suggesting that China's membership in the World Trade Organization has disciplined developing countries' use of the antidumping policy. The paper conjectures that China's Most-Favored-Nation status under the World Trade Organization, the designation of China as a nonmarket economy in antidumping investigations until 2016, and the retaliatory incentives generated by the growing deflection of Chinese exports to developing country markets may have overwhelmed the institutional effect of the trade organization in shaping the pattern of LDC antidumping decision making toward China.     

Supporters’ responses to contested trade negotiations: the European Commission’s rhetoric on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership*

Abstract

Negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) commenced in 2013, and soon became the most controversial bilateral trade agreement negotiations ever attempted by the European Union (EU). When trying to understand the escalating debate over the proposed agreement, most analyses have highlighted opposition to the deal, especially from civil society organizations. However, a full understanding of the debate surrounding TTIP requires analysis of supporters’ responses, as these changed in response to strategies used by opponents of the agreement. This article uses a novel approach in trade policy scholarship—rhetorical analysis—to focus on the European Commission Trade Directorate’s response to contestation over TTIP. Drawing on work on the ‘rhetoric of reaction’, this article identifies the rhetorical strategies used by EU trade commissioners from 2013 to 2016. It outlines the evolution of the rhetoric and accompanying changes in process and policy, providing insights on the impact of TTIP politicization on the guiding principles of the EU’s trade policy.     

The politics of deep integration*

Abstract

Efforts to pursue ‘deep integration’—agreeing to international rules governing domestic policies to mitigate their adverse trade effects—have been pivotal to the politicization of trade policy. The contributions to this special issue focus on different political dynamics associated with recent high-profile efforts at deep integration. Collectively, they analyse the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) and the Japan–European Union Economic Partnership Agreement (JEEPA) negotiations. The special issue, therefore, focuses on extreme examples of deep integration in order to illuminate new political dynamics. This introductory article introduces the concept of ‘deep integration’ and explores how it has been pursued in historical and contemporary trade negotiations. It also relates recent attempts at deep integration to the rise of populist anti-globalization movements. In light of these discussions, this article introduces the contributions to the issue. It concludes by considering whether the politics associated with TTIP and CETA in Europe represent the future of trade policy.     

The GATS and internet-based services: between market access and domestic regulation

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) has attracted much attention in public and academic debate. The aim of this article is to analyse the application of the GATS to internet-based services, thus providing a lens through which important issues concerning the GATS can be highlighted. This article reviews the far-reaching implications of the recent US—Gambling dispute for the regulation of (internet-based) services. It argues that World Trade Organization Members need to make a greater effort to delineate the key GATS obligations (market access, national treatment, and disciplines on domestic regulation) in order to provide national law- and policy-makers and trade negotiators with more legal certainty and predictability in the application of the GATS.     

Trade at the margin: Estimating the economic implications of preferential trade agreements

Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) have become the most prevalent form of international trade liberalization in recent decades, even though it remains far from clear what their effects on economies and their key units, firms, are. This paper evaluates the distributional consequences of trade liberalization within industries differentiating two distinct aspects in which trade liberalization could result in higher trade flows: the intensive vs. the extensive margin of trade. In particular, we analyze whether trade liberalization leads to increased trade flows because either firms trade more volume in products they have already traded before (intensive margin) or because they start to trade products they have not traded previously (extensive margin), or both. We test these arguments for the Dominican Republic–Central America–United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) and exporting firms based in Costa Rica for the time-period 2008–2014. The results of our study suggest that the effects of CAFTA-DR depend not only on whether we analyze the extensive versus the intensive margin of trade but also whether the product in question is homogenous or differentiated and whether the exporting firm under analysis is small or large. In particular, we find support for the theoretical expectation that firms exporting heterogeneous products, such as textiles, gain from trade agreements, such as CAFTA-DR, in that they can export more varieties of their products. Yet at the same time, they tend to lose at the intensive margin by a reduction in their trade volume while the opposite pattern occurs for firms exporting homogenous products.     

中、日、韩农产品贸易争端分析及中国的对策

中国加入世界贸易组织 (WTO)后 ,中、日、韩 3国之间的农产品贸易领域进一步扩大 ,同时其贸易争端也与日俱增。尤其是蔬菜、水果等农产品的双边贸易摩擦日益加剧。面对中、日、韩 3国农产品贸易形势的新变化 ,中国应当审时度势 ,加快农业技术引进 ,增加农产品的科技含量 ,从而提高农产品质量和国际竞争力 ,并采取各种灵活的措施应对可能出现的贸易摩擦 ,更好地维护自己的利益。     

The Unintended Consequences of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Negotiations

ABSTRACT

Although stalled since 2016, the negotiations on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have had major unintended consequences. The TTIP led to demands from third countries to upgrade their trade relationship with the EU and to unprecedented politicisation. As second-order effects of the latter, it endangered the EU-Canada trade agreement and brought about reform of EU trade governance and amendments to EU trade policy positions. These unintended consequences occurred because of inflated expectations about and insufficient awareness of the different nature of TTIP with regard to scope and partner compared to other trade negotiations. In the meantime, EU trade policy has adapted to the new politics of trade, making unintended consequences less likely.