Multilateral Trade Governance Research Articles

Developing Countries and Joint Statement Initiatives at the WTO: Damned if You Join, Damned if You Don't?

ABSTRACTLimited progress in World Trade Organization (WTO) multilateral trade negotiations has led to calls to expand plurilateral processes through which groups of member states can negotiate new agreements. These calls have manifested in Joint Statement Initiatives (JSIs), covering issues such as investments and e‐commerce. To their proponents, JSIs offer a path to update rules and move towards flexible multilateralism. However, critics argue that JSIs marginalize developing countries and reinforce the dominance of advanced economies. Notwithstanding this criticism, a growing number of developing countries are joining these initiatives. Through data collected from in‐depth interviews with officials from 60 WTO member states, this article examines the drivers for growing JSI membership among developing countries. It illustrates that many are joining JSIs to avoid being excluded from agreements that might become binding in the future. While such membership is driven by fear of exclusion and the preference to ‘be in the room’, the negotiation processes of the JSIs often mean that developing countries have little actual influence over the negotiation outcomes. The article concludes that JSIs represent a significant change in the organization of multilateral trade negotiations and enable larger economies to restore their ‘go‐it‐alone power’ in multilateral trade governance.

Interventionism, Decoupling, and Reshuffle: New Developments in Global Supply Chain Management

Developed countries, led by the United States and the European Union, have stepped up security review of supply chains and adopted a series of restrictive policies and protectionist measures to reshape a more secure, sustainable, and risk-controllable supply chain. A key objective of the West’s supply chain strategy is to wean their economies off Chinese influence by resorting to discriminatory policies. Supply chain interventionism on national security grounds violates market rules on which the global supply chain is based, and also runs counter to the principles of nondiscrimination and liberalization embedded in the multilateral trade governance architecture. Global supply chain reshuffles will take time and incur huge costs, leaving ample room for Beijing to make necessary adjustments and bolster its position in global supply networks.

Declining hegemony and the sources of Trump’s disengagement from multilateral trade governance: the interaction between domestic politics and the international political economy

As a result of the economic and political rise of China and Trump’s decision to undermine the liberal international order, theories of hegemony have regained center stage in both policy-oriented and scholarly debates. Yet, a careful analysis of the evolution of the US foreign policy strategy in the realm of international trade politics reveals that traditional theories of hegemonic decline are ill-equipped to account for both the timing and the content of the Trump administration’s behavior in this issue area. This paper argues in favor of integrating structural theories of hegemonic transition/stability with an analysis of the domestic sources of trade policy preferences. To do so, we draw on the International Political Economy literature highlighting how the domestic political process triggered by the dynamics of international economic competition combined with structural forces in shaping the timing and content of the Trump administration’s disengagement from the existing multilateral trade governance structures.

Withering Globalization? The Global Value Chain Effects of Trade Decoupling

The paper analyses the interindustry spillover effects of bilateral trade conflicts using the example of the 2018-2019 China-USA bilateral trade war. Empirical results are produced using a new heuristic method based on hypothetical extraction and substitution in an International Input-Output model. This model tracts a series of direct and indirect sectoral effects and provides an intuitive and computationally tractable way of mapping the potential gains and losses affecting other trade partners. It sheds light on some intricate inter-industry implications that are not obvious when considering traditional trade models. A large share of the negative impacts may be felt by third countries through two separate trade channels. Firstly, because the production of a final product in one country relies on importing intermediate goods from other trade partners, who may be negatively impacted by the trade destruction effects of the trade embargo. Secondly, because trade embargoes lead to trade substitution in order to fill the gaps left by embargoed products, and to trade deflection. Deflection occurs when the trade belligerents redeploy their unsold exports towards third countries, increasing competition for market shares. This situation is an additional threat for the Multilateral Trade Governance as large-scale trade deflection may induce a cascade of Tit-for-Tat protectionist measures, in a situation where the COVID-19 pandemics has fanned the industrial nationalism, trade protectionism and geo-political tensions which were already perceptible since the global crisis of 2008-2009.

When trade and foreign policy collide: Indonesia in Doha development round

This article examines Indonesia’s conflicting roles in global trade governance, particularly in the Doha Development Round. This article argues that multilateral trade governance is utilised by Indonesian foreign policymakers to be the arena for Indonesia’s aspiration to exercise a greater role at the global level. This aspiration is reflected in its support towards liberalisation agenda at the global level. However, the commitments made, as well as the rhetoric calling for a more liberalised multilateral trading system within the Round, are not in line with Indonesia’s protectionist-leaning domestic trade policies. This condition, arguably, is the result of the co-optation of trade policy in Doha Round by the Indonesian foreign policy agenda. While the Ministry of Trade has full authority to formulate trade negotiation position, Indonesia’s aspiration for international status pursued by foreign policymakers has significantly influenced its trade policy agenda in the Doha Round. Thus, Indonesia’s behaviour in the Doha Round can only be interpreted as role-playing in which Indonesia ‘play the role’ to enhance its international status rather than based its position on coherent domestic economic interest.

Regional Powers’ Rise and Impact on International Conflict and Negotiation: China and India as Global and Regional Players

AbstractIn this article, I investigate the impact that the rise of regional powers as global players has had on the nature of international conflict, and also the negotiating table. I focus specifically on China and India, and analyze their negotiating behavior in two areas: one multilateral, the other regional. Despite the apparent similarities that one might assume at first glance, the article points to some significant points of difference between these two players. The differences are important from a policy perspective, besides being theoretically interesting. The argument proceeds in five parts. The first section explains the reasoning behind the case selection, with respect to the countries (China and India) as well as issue‐areas (multilateral trade governance, and the Belt and Road Initiative [BRI]). It also outlines the main hypotheses in Section 1. Section 2 investigates the two hypotheses about the negotiation behaviors of China and India in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Section 3 takes on a similar comparison with reference to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Section 4 presents the conclusions of the study, and Section 5 offers policy recommendations.

Extraterritoriality and public procurement regulation in the context of global supply chains’ governance

With the globalisation of supply chains, the respect for human rights and labour standards in procurement practices has become a crucial priority also in the domestic regulation of public procurement. This paper focuses on two specific characteristics of the use of public procurement regulation for the enforcement of human rights and labour standards: its extraterritorial effects on companies and firms across different jurisdictions and its reliance on private certifications and labels. Both of these new aspects are evident within the new 2014 EU Procurement Directives, which includes a number of far-reaching regulatory features that facilitate the monitoring of the respect for human rights and labour standards of contractors and subcontractors across borders. However, this new dimension of public procurement has the potential to create tension within the framework of multilateral trade governance, specifically, the World Trade Organization (WTO) trade regime.

Multilateral trade governance as social field: Global civil society and the WTO

ABSTRACTThe 1999 Seattle protests, which brought thirty thousand people to the streets in opposition to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and set off a series of other protests against the multilateral economic institutions, helped spark significant academic interest in global civil society and its potential to act as a transformative force in global economic governance. In this article, however, I argue that many of the civil society actors that have sought to engage with and influence the WTO have been transformed in the process. They have both become more technocratic and increasingly moved toward advocating positions that accord with the neoliberal trade paradigm. I draw on Bourdieu's field theory to explain why and how this transformation has occurred. I argue that, in order to understand these changes among parts of civil society, we need to see multilateral trade governance as a social field, which civil society actors enter into as they seek to impact outcomes at the WTO. The case of the WTO challenges existing theories that conceive of global civil society as an exogenous force that acts upon the institutions of global governance, showing instead that global civil society is not in fact independent or autonomous but shaped and influenced by the institution it targets.

World Trade Law Literature Review

This article provides an overview of the most relevant interdisciplinary and international literature engaging with the study of world trade law. The first section offers a brief review of the literature, locating international economic law in an increasingly globalized world and answering the question of where trade law belongs in this larger sphere. The second section examines literature pertaining to the sources and functions of world trade law. The third section continues this discussion of institutional development, reviewing key literature on governance issues at the WTO, examining the legal issues of antidumping and the enforcement of intellectual property rights alongside the political issue of integrating developing countries into the multilateral trade governance system. Finally, the article will review some of the most important literature that examines social priorities in the context of trade law. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the future of world trade law with respect to trade liberalization, dispute settlement and the place of trade regulation in the larger context of international law.

A European Identity in Global Campaigning? Activist Groups and the ‘Seattle to Brussels’ (S2B) Network

What does it mean when activist networks describe themselves as ‘European’ or ‘Global’? Existing studies into the geographic character of such networks have focused on the interplay between multiple ‘levels’. However, there is a need for greater research on the discursive function played by geographic descriptors within the formation of activist networks. This article examines the use of multiple geographic descriptors to articulate a particular activist network – the ‘Seattle to Brussels’ (S2B) network – consisting of European-based groups contesting the form of multilateral trade governance embodied in the WTO. To map out how groups forged relations with one another under a ‘European’ identity, the article applies a discourse theoretical analysis to extensive empirical data including interviews with activists and participant observation at key events. The article has relevance to understanding both how transnational protest networks are formed and the role of multiple geographic signifiers in global politics.

Formal Institutions Regulating Flows of Goods and Services: Review Essay for the International Studies Association Compendium Project

This article is primarily concerned with two eras of trade governance: the long period before the twentieth century in which geographically rooted entities governed trade through a variety of political mechanisms, and the modern multilateral trade governance system that developed following the Second World War. The first section examines a portion of the most important theoretical literature cited by scholars of IPE as they study the institutions regulating flows of goods and services. The second section examines the ideas and events that shaped the long history of trade regulation before the Second World War. The third section examines postwar trade governance from the stillbirth of the International Trade Organization to the successful creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995. Next we move to an overview of competing and complementary trade governance options such as regional trade arrangements. The article concludes with a short overview of the evolving governance issues facing international institutions that regulate trade and a brief discussion of the potential future trajectories for institutions that regulate international flows of goods and services.

A New Model for Global Governance: Mutual Benefit of the WTO and FTAs

Setting up Experimental Economic Development Zone and groping the way across the river is the successful experience of China's reform and opening up, which could be referenced for global trade governance. Similarly, Economic Integration (FTA) should be regarded as an experimental area of the global multilateral trade governance institutions (WTO). The tough contradiction between balanced development of trade and equally enjoying fruits of the development by all members along with deficiencies of the WTO multilateral trade governance institutions could be broken, through the practicality and experimental role of establishing FTA by seeking successful experience, regulations and mechanisms. And they will be applied to the WTO multilateral system to better make it a sound global trade governance institution. Consequently, the WTO and FTA of long‐term coexistence and complementary trend is a new pattern of global trade governance.

Global Trade Governance and the Challenges of African Activism in the Doha Development Agenda Negotiations

This article develops a bottom-up approach to global trade governance and explains how subordinate states are able to develop resistance strategies to top-down processes in the World Trade Organisation (WTO). It highlights the growing activism and influence of African states in the global governance of international trade through a case study of the involvement of African states in the current Doha Development Agenda (DDA) negotiations. In so doing, it presents new evidence of the role played by non-dominant states in shaping and contesting the rules and practices of contemporary global trade governance. The article also provides theoretical insights into the source of African resistance in the WTO by drawing attention to the role of discourse in contemporary global trade governance. In this case study the analysis focuses in particular on how subordinate African actors make use of prevailing discourses of development to hold major powers and the WTO to account for their public commitment to negotiate new trade rules that will deliver development. It underlines the extent to which subordinate actors tend to use what is available to them—in this case the discourses of dominant actors—to challenge existing power structures. The conclusion reached is that African resistance creates an African dilemma; while resistance to existing power processes means that African member states can no longer be ignored in WTO negotiations, it also means that the WTO as a forum for global governance is less effective since consensus-based agreement becomes more difficult to achieve. And the less effective the WTO is in multilateral trade governance, the more member states—and in particular dominant states—ignore the WTO and seek bilateral and regional alternatives in order to secure market opening.

Constitutionalism, Multilateral Trade Governance and Social Regulation. Edited by C JOERGES and E U PETERSMANN. Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing, 2006. 554 pp. 75

Constitutionalism, Multilateral Trade Governance and Social Regulation. Edited by C JOERGES and E U PETERSMANN. Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing, 2006. 554 pp. 75