World Trade Regime Research Articles

Economic Geography, Politics, and the World Trade Regime

AbstractAlthough globalization and the world trade regime have reduced the significance of distance between countries, within countries geography matters now more than ever. Inside countries’ borders, economic activities, such as production and employment, occur unevenly across space. As a result, international trade impacts parts of a country differently. Some areas benefit from rising trade, while others experience reductions in local wages and employment as a result of increased import competition. Because regions’ experience of globalization varies, public opinion about trade differs across geographic areas within countries. Voters living in regions advantaged by trade are more likely to support economic openness, while voters living in regions negatively impacted by trade are more skeptical of the benefits of globalization. The geographic disparities in public attitudes towards trade often align with salient political cleavages. As a result, debates over trade have become increasingly polarized in many countries, which may threaten states’ continued economic openness as well as their engagement with, and even support for, the world trade regime.

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.

Tamamlanamayan Doha Kalkınma Ticaret Müzakerelerinin NeoGramşiyan Perspektiften Analizi

This paper analyzes the lack of progress and the breakdown of the Doha Round talks in world trade since 2001 from a neo-Gramscian perspective. The failure to conclude multilateral trade negotiations reflect an emerging new architecture of power politics in the world political-economic order. Major economic powers, including the United States (US), the European Union (EU), Japan and Canada as well as leading transnational companies used to have a significant impact on guiding the agenda of the multilateral trade negotiations as well as defining the outcomes. However, in the context of the WTO, emerging powers such as India, Brazil, and China and several non-governmental organizations critical of neoliberal globalization began to confront the former groups’ dominance. Developing and developed countries have contending views on the agenda issues, marked by confrontation on the former’s insistence for the liberalization of agricultural markets by industrialized states and the latter’s pressure for the liberalization of non-agricultural markets. Both sides employ certain strategies and discourses to coerce or to persuade the opposing parties. Hence, the paper argues that the multilateral trade negotiations emerge as zones of exercising hegemony rather than being an area to produce common norms, values and policies for the well-being of all members in the world trade regime.

The European Response to a Challenging World Trade Regime

The European Response to a Challenging World Trade Regime

Policy Space and Policy Autonomy under the WTO: A Comparison of Post-Crisis Industrial Policies in Brazil and the US

AbstractLegal scholars engaged with the Law and Development literature usually propose two subtypes of scholarship. One type looks at a given law and tries to fix it, assuming that there is a positive relationship between law and socio-economic change. The second type of scholarship challenges the assumptions about the nature of the relationship between law and socio-economic change. This paper is situated in the second group. By analyzing domestic and international legal regimes and how they relate to domestic and international economic policy, this article addresses the disparities between the relative capacities of countries in different developmental trajectories to innovate in terms of industrial policies. This paper offers a distinction between the concepts of policy space and policy autonomy within the World Trade Organizations’ legal framework that reflects how countries with different regulatory traditions interact with the world trade regime. Focusing on the industrial policies implemented by the United States and Brazil in the period after the 2007–2009 economic crisis, it compares the room for policy space and policy autonomy under the WTO regime.

'Made in the World': Does the Current Global-Value-Change Economy Require Any Changes in the WTO Regulatory Framework?

The international fragmentation of production in global value chains (GVCs) is arguably one of the most important factors shaping international trade today. It challenges the way we look at the global trade. Trade in intermediates, trade in task and trade in services comprise majority of the international trade. More and more products are now 'Made in the World' rather than 'Made in China' or 'Made in Germany'. Exports and imports have been closely interlinked so as to make the capacity of a country to exports heavily dependent on efficient import. The role of multinationals has been crucial in spreading and managing the value chain globally. The rise of the 21st century trade and trade-service-investment-IP nexus has made relevant policy making more complicated and multidimensional. As the World Trade Organization (WTO) was busy with Doha Development Agenda (DDA) and 20th century trade and border disciplines, these behind the border 'deep integration‘ issues have been largely developed and regulated by the Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs). Though GVCs strengthens the case for multilateralism, they have been increasingly regional leading to the emergence of '21st century regionalism'. Most of the developing and least developed countries (LDCs) remain excluded from the GVCs -- a fact that seriously questions its global face. Rise of the PTAs and the recent under-negotiation mega-regionals have eroded WTO centricity of the world trade regime by threatening to establish an alternative global mechanism for GVCs. Now to stay relevant to these new dimensions, WTO must live up to the challenges before they go out of its ambit. The 'Bali package' has created a momentum by confirming the political support of the world community for WTO rulemaking. WTO must build on it to reach a multilateral consensus dealing with the 21st century trade governance before it is too late.

Global Regime Divergence: Why the World Trade Regime Has Become More Legalized While the Financial Regime Has Become Less Legalized

The international trade and finance regimes exhibit different levels of legalization. The trade regime is made up of treaties, whereas the financial regime, in contrast, is ruled by agreements that are informal. This difference reflects the different institutional strategies that were successfully pursued by each group of globalists in their respective area over the last fifty years: exporters worked in close relation with their government to build a regime able to contain protectionist opposition at home and provide access to markets abroad; bankers, in contrast, accessed world markets by pressing for the repeal of government regulation at home and intergovernmental regulation abroad. Beyond offering an explanation for the institutional differences between the trade and financial regimes, the study makes three general contributions to the governance literature. First, the formal-informal dimension is shown to be part of a larger list of divergent traits between two broad ideal types of governance, labeled law-based and market-mediated. Second, the factors that account for the divergence between trade and finance also generalize to other regimes in the areas of economics, the environment, human rights, and security. Third, the study offers a typology of informal governance that cuts through the current distinction between trans-governmental networks and private governance.

International Trade and Human Rights: An Unfinished Debate

We are living in a world in which the moral legitimacy of cultures, religions, ideologies, and the practices of states, international organizations, and even corporations is being measured against human rights norms. The moral significance of and practical respect for human rights has grown so much that human rights have been described as a global religion, and a new standard for civilization. International trade, a popular and much debated issue of our time, is one of those phenomena that is currently being measured against the standards of human rights. Leading experts remain divided about whether global trade is good or bad for human rights. There are those who are utterly convinced that the world trade regime has a mutual basis with human rights and see potential in the growth of one as a positive sign for the other. There are also those who, on the other hand, are equally convinced that human rights and international trade regimes are in a relationship of enmity.

Trade, Globalization and Economic Policy

This article places international trade law in the context of the rapid increase in economic growth and globalization over the last 60 years that is reducing poverty and expanding the middle class in most nations of the world. This economic and cultural integration of markets and peoples has been stimulated by two major factors: first, the increase in technological innovation in transport, information technology and manufacturing processes and second, the removal of legal barriers to the flow of goods, capital and knowledge around the globe stimulated by successive rounds of trade negotiations at the GATT and later the WTO.The arguments for and against globalization are analyzed within the context of the history of economic ideas and with an understanding that there are tradeoffs because not all people benefit from these rapid changes. While technological innovation spurs economic growth, the full benefits cannot be realized unless technology and the resulting products are widely available through trade. The world trade regime has evolved to significantly remove barriers to trade, provide a forum to settle trade disputes, and develop uniform legal standards to resolve disputes. The chapter forecasts a further increase in the trend toward one world market, the convergence of wage rates for manufactured products and many services, the continued rise of the middle class in emerging economies and a movement toward greater international governance driven by increased pressure for uniform laws to reduce uncertainty and for international forums to reduce inconsistency in application.

Climate and trade policies: from mutual destruction to mutual support

AbstractThere is no doubt that trade and climate policies can be mutually destructive. But there are three strong reasons to suggest that they can also be mutually supportive: they have a common problem, common foes, and common friends. Mutual support would be much stronger if the world regimes for these two policies shared a few common principles. The climate community should feel at ease with the broad WTO principles of ‘national treatment’ and ‘most-favoured nation’, and rely on them in building its own treaty and institutions. The trade community should grasp the opportunity to benefit from the better disciplines on adjustment policies that it is hoped the climate community will design.These conclusions should put the many pending problems into a more positive perspective, and persuade negotiators to find pragmatic compromises, as was the case with the GATT. Using this perspective, the paper focuses on a few key issues, such as the definition of carbon border taxes and the reasons to ban carbon tariffs. Other cases of mutual support are examined. For instance, the climate community should not repeat the mistakes of the world trade regime in dealing with the developing and least developed countries.

Strategies for refinancing of SMEs in Bangladesh: Problems & constraints

Over the past decade, there has been a significant change in the world trade regime, too. The WTO techniques agreements limit the use of certain trade measures as quantitative restrictions and subsidies. Such development has also implication for a country's strategy in supporting its domestic industry in including SMEs. WTO agreements cover not only the traditional goods sector but also new sectors like services and intellectual property rights. There is a tendency for considering these newly included sectors as constraints to trade prospects of a poor country like Bangladesh. There are certain other areas where improvements pro­vide genuine incentives to SMEs and contribute to their enhanced competitiveness. Improved infrastructure, better law and order situation, and efficient ports and transportation are likely to impact favorably upon the SMEs sector and such things may be no less important than mere policy supported incentives. However, these provisions have now become realities. Bangladesh should continue its efforts to make the world community appreciate the difficult economic situation of the LDCs and to help to attain var­ious trade preferences and conces­sions. Its long-run economic pros­perity critically depends on success or otherwise of its efforts to turn the challenges of globalization opportunities. This will create a strong and potential base for economic development, which will in turn accelerate the process of poverty reduction, and reduction of unemployment, create employment opportunities as well as accelerate the overall economic growth of the country.

The fragmentation of the global climate governance architecture

AbstractThe term fragmentation implies that policy domains are marked by a patchwork of public and private institutions that differ in their character, constituencies, spatial scope, subject matter, and objectives. While the degree of fragmentation varies across issue areas and their respective architectures, global climate politics is characterized by an advanced state of institutional diversity. In recent years, scholars have increasingly addressed this emerging phenomenon of international relations. The article finds that the predominant focus of these studies has been on dyadic overlaps, i.e., interlinkages between two institutions, and less on the overarching level of entire architectures and their degree of fragmentation. This goes in particular for research on the global climate change architecture. Many studies have attended to the relationship between the United Nations climate regime and other institutions: multilateral technology partnerships, regimes regulating other environmental domains like ozone or biological diversity, and regimes from non‐environmental issue areas like the world trade regime. However, a cross‐cutting account of these overlaps which addresses the overall implications of institutional fragmentation on climate change is still missing. As possible areas for further research the article identifies: consequences of fragmentation (e.g., a new division of labor or increased inter‐institutional conflict), fragmentation management and conditions of its effectiveness; theory‐driven analyses on the reasons of fragmentation within and across policy domains.WIREs Clim Change2011 2 255–270 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.104This article is categorized under:Policy and Governance > Multilevel and Transnational Climate Change Governance

Environmental effects of intensification of agriculture: livestock production and regulation

This article deals with the relationship between industrialization of agriculture and the environment in developing countries. We specifically focus on livestock production and regulation. We develop a simple economic framework to demonstrate the effect of location on intensification of industrial activity in farming, and discuss this issue in the context of urbanization and economic growth in developing countries. Policy implications of the model are discussed in light of the experience of developed countries in regulating livestock pollution and other externalities. We argue that environmental problems from agricultural industrialization in developing countries may pose major challenges. In the case of livestock production, these are compounded by production intensity, high population densities in periurban and urban areas, and the generally lower public health standards. As the recent outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and avian influenza epidemics in Asia suggest, the new era of globalization and the onset of a free world trade regime points to the urgent need for developing countries to install inspection and enforcement mechanisms that ensure product safety and quality, as well as minimize the adverse effects on the environment.

국제사회 힘의 변화와 해양레짐 출현에 관한 소고 -유엔 해양법협약을 중심으로-

As the political arguments on international power concept has gradually been deepened, the role of international regimes, defined as principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which nation-actors' expectations converge in a given issue-area, has also been reinforced. There are many ways of understanding about international regimes. In terms of realistic theories, international regimes are one of methods of maintaining hegemonic power order of hegemonic nation and in terms of liberalistic theories, international regimes are understood as the products of mutual inter-dependence of nations in changing international society. As a matter of fact, if we take structural causes and regime consequences into severe consideration, we can find not a few characteristics of international regimes, such as security regime, world trade and fiance regime, ocean regime, environmental regime, human right regime, etc. This paper will examine the changing concept of power after World War II in three categories of hard power (military power), meta power (regime creating power), and soft power (advanced in cultural, diplomatical, and technological power). This paper will provide the evidence of why the changing power concepts will be strongly related with the emergence of international regimes. The UN convention on the law of the sea will chosen as a standard case of the ocean regime and it's regime structure and role will also be analysed in both realistic :md liberalistic theories. Futhermore, the nations' interests involved in the UN convention on the law of the sea will be analytically classified and finally a future prospectus of the UN convention on the law of the sea as an ocean regime will be tested.

Fair Trade For All: How Trade Can Promote Development (review)

Reviewed by: Fair Trade For All: How Trade Can Promote Development Michael Northcott Joseph E. Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton. 2005. Fair Trade For All: How Trade Can Promote Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 315 , Hb, £16. The foundational assumption of this book is that farmers and traders in developing countries who are given freer access to international markets benefit materially. However the authors also recognise that none of the developed industrial nations achieved their present state of material advancement by granting unfettered access to their markets to foreign producers. Indeed quite the opposite is the case. Britain defended its relatively unsophisticated domestic textile producers from the much higher quality textiles from India in the nineteenth century by imposing tariffs on Indian produced cotton not only in the British market but also in India. In this book Stiglitz and Charlton argue that the present regime of tariffs and agricultural subsidies, dominated as it is still by the interests of the former colonial powers, needs to change. Through micro and macro economic analysis they argue the case that liberalisation of world trade, and the removal of the existing and inbuilt biases towards the developed world, will ultimately be beneficial both to developed and developing countries. However they also recognise that there will be costs in adjusting to a more liberal world trade regime, the lion's share of which will fall not on the rich but on the poorer nations. In addressing this problem Stiglitz and Charlton argue that the World Trade Organisation, and in particular negotiations on the next 'development round', ought to move away from mercantilist priorities where each nation or trading block begins from a position of defending its own economic interests and instead embrace a regime in which active assistance to developing countries in adjusting to a new more liberal international trade regime is offered by the developed world. In presenting their argument Stiglitz and Charlton recognise that there is a moral as well as an economic case to be made. Most economists favour [End Page 282] the abolition of tariffs and subsidies because they hinder efficiency. However protection can aid nascent industries in developing countries and small farms in developed countries neither of which, in a global comparison of equivalent producers, could be said to be efficient. The contest, as Stiglitz and Charlon recognise, is between efficiency and fairness. But economists do not recognise fairness as an intrinsic element in the mathematical models which guide their policy proposals. And international trade negotiators and lobbyists in Geneva and elsewhere are also not known for their prioritisation of fairness. There is nothing intrinsically fair, as Stiglitz and Charlton recognise, about an international institution such as the WTO where the outcomes of its deliberations are guided by the extent to which member nations can afford to provide trade counsellors and negotiators. Where the United States and the European Union can field hundreds of staff to argue their cause, many developing countriescan only afford a contribution to the salary and expenses of one shared regional trade representative. Just as the historical process which led to the creation of the WTO was dominated by the historic colonial trade regime, so the WTO continues in its processes and procedures to offer a playing field which is still weighted toward the rich. Stiglitz and Charlton suggest that what is needed is a new weighting of outcomes in trade negotiations in which development for the poorest becomes a priority and national self interest takes a back seat to international efforts to improve the welfare of the more than two billion people who live on less than two dollars a day. How likely though is this kind of shift in the priorities of developed nation trade counsellors likely to occur? Stiglitz and Charlton are optimistic, though the news from the recent WTO conference in Hong Kong did not provide much evidence of this kind of moral shift. The reality is that what passes for free trade underthe policing of the WTO is still rigged in favour of those nations – and especially the United States and the European Union – which can and do continue to protect and subsidise their domestic markets while dumping excess agricultural and...

The perversity of preferences: GSP and developing country trade policies, 1976–2000

Developed countries maintain special tariff preferences, namely the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), for imports from developing countries. Critics highlight the underachieving nature of such preferences, but we know little about how they affect recipients' own trade policies. We conduct the first examination of this question, using a panel of 154 developing countries. We find that countries removed from GSP adopt more liberal trade policies than those remaining eligible. The results, robust to endogeneity and alternative measures, suggest that developing countries may be best served by full integration into the reciprocity-based world trade regime rather than continued GSP-style preferences.

Enforcement of WTO Rulings: An Interest Group Analysis

This essay explains the WTO's enforcement mechanism in terms of interest group theory. Under the Dispute Settlement Understanding, a WTO member that fails to comply with a ruling in a trade dispute is subject to from the complaining member: the complaining member may raise tariffs against the offending member's products. This remedy creates incentives for exporters in the offending country to lobby their government in favor of compliance. As a result, the retaliation remedy promotes compliance without intruding directly on national institutions. It is thus superior to suggested reforms, like direct effect, that would commandeer courts or other national governmental bodies. The retaliation remedy resolves a dilemma at the heart of the world trade regime: how to give the WTO sufficient power to promote global trade without conferring so much power that the organization becomes a threat to sovereignty and representative government.

Making global trade work for people

The world's trade regime is promoted by international agencies and most governments as the best way to lift the poor out of poverty and achieve sustainable development. But does it contribute to human development or not? This reassessment looks in detail at the way it has worked under the GATT and under the World Trade Organization, and analyses how it is working and how it can be improved. The book aims to make major contribution to the debates surrounding globalization and the impact of trade on the poor, on social stability and on the environment. It is intended to provide a benchmark for future policy discussion and analysis.

A Review of Economic Analyses on the World Trade Organization

The GATT, which later became the WTO, has contributed to the expansion and activation of world trade by assisting trading partners to establish and enforce international trade rules through multilateral trade negotiations. Currently negotiations for new trade rules are continuing by launching Doha Round. This review intends to promote understanding of a basic analytical framework, upon which constructive debates and research have been conducted about the role of the WTO in the world trade regime. To achieve this goal, we provide a review of recent theoretical developments in studies on the role of the WTO regarding trade negotiations and rule enforcement, based on a commonly used model of trade in the literature. With respect to trade negotiations, we review a study of the effect of the reciprocity principle and most favored nation clause of the WTO on the outcome of trade negotiations and analyze the race-to-the-bottom concerns that the exclusive focus of the WTO on tariff negotiations will promote deterioration of environmental and labor standards. Regarding the rule of enforcement, we introduce the repeated game framework that is often used in the analysis of international trade rule enforcement, then discuss the studies on the role of safeguard provisions and the dispute settlement procedure of the WTO.

A Review of Economic Analyses on the World Trade Organization

The GATT, which later became the WTO, has contributed to the expansion and activation of world trade by assisting trading partners to establish and enforce international trade rules through multilateral trade negotiations. Currently negotiations for new trade rules are contironing by launching Doha Round. This review intends to promote understanding of a basic analytical framework, upon which constructive debates and research have been conducted about the role of the WTO in the world trade regime. To achieve this goal, we provide a review of recent theoretical developments in studies on the role of the WTO regarding trade negotiations and rule enforcement, based on a commonly used model of trade in the literature. With respect to trade negotiations, we review a study of the effect of the reciprocity principle and most favored nation clause of the WTO on the outcome of trade negotiations and analyze the race-to-the-bottom concerns that the exclusive focus of the WTO on tariff negotiations will promote deterioration of environmental and labor standards. Regarding the rule of enforcement, we introduce the repeated game framework that is often used in the analysis of international trade rule enforcement, then discuss the studies on the role of safeguard provisions and the dispute settlement procedure of the WTO.