Bøger i Cambridge International Trade and Economic Law serien

Practitioners in international organizations, trade ministries and law firms will appreciate this analysis of currently unresolved and technical legal problems posed by non-discrimination obligations in agreements on international trade in services (WTO/GATS).

African regional trade integration has grown exponentially in the last decade. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the legal framework within which it is being pursued. It will fill a huge knowledge gap and serve as an invaluable teaching and research tool for policy makers in the public and private sectors, teachers, researchers and students of African trade and beyond. The author argues that African Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) are best understood as flexible legal regimes particularly given their commitment to variable geometry and multiple memberships. He analyzes the progress made toward trade liberalization in each region, how the RTAs are financed, their trade remedy and judicial regimes, and how well they measure up to Article XXIV of GATT. The book also covers monetary unions as well as intra-African regional integration, and examines free trade agreements with non-African regions including the Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union.

Debates over how WTO law should deal with regulatory measures linked to processes and production methods (PPMs) have long gone unsolved. Here, Christiane Conrad offers a comprehensive legal analysis and proposes a novel approach which draws on the objectives and established economic rationales of the WTO Agreements.

Does the WTO leave appropriate policy space to its Members to pursue legitimate objectives, such as the economic development of developing countries, the conversion to a greener economy, or recovery in times of a global economic downturn? This legal and normative analysis of the WTO rules on subsidies and countervailing measures sheds light on why governments resort to subsidization and, by tracing the historical origins of the SCM Agreement and the Agreement on Agriculture, on why they have been willing to gradually confine their policy space. This sets the stage for a systematic and comprehensive legal analysis of both agreements, which integrates the vast amount of case law and proposals tabled in the Doha round. A separate case study explores the complex rules on export credit support, and the book closes with an in-depth normative assessment of these WTO rules on subsidies and countervailing measures.

As the only comprehensive study of the WTO's waiver practice and the law of waivers, this book makes an important contribution to research into the developing law of international organizations and international law, in particular the discussion surrounding the democratic responsiveness of international legal regimes.

This comparative study on the laws of foreign aid as a central field of global public policy asks how accountability and human rights can be preserved while combating poverty. Placing the law in its theoretical and political context, it is relevant to lawyers and political scientists, academics and practitioners alike.

Christian A. Melischek's analysis of 'product likeness' under Article III of the GATT proposes a substantive economic test to render the notion of product likeness operational and examines the institutional and procedural frameworks for expert economic evidence necessary to implement an economic approach to the interpretation of product likeness.

This book analyses the role of international organizations in WTO dispute settlement as arising from a number of WTO disputes. In particular, the roles of the IMF, WIPO, WCO and WHO are addressed. The use of the Vienna Convention rules of interpretation framework allows an evaluation of the weight attributed to this material by the WTO adjudicator. This allows specific conclusions to be drawn regarding the level of institutional sensitivity of the WTO adjudicator to each of the organizations. As well as being a valuable source of research, the analysis will appeal to international law scholars, civil servants and law practitioners interested in the WTO and dispute settlement.

This book is aimed at both academic and practitioner audiences. It analyses the policy underpinnings of shareholders' claims for reflective loss, and will constitute an important tool for attorneys and arbitrators who have to address these types of claims.

Trade remedies are very widely used in today's global trading environment and are effective in closing national markets to foreign competitors. This book explores one way in which exporters can challenge this: by using the judicial review mechanism of the importing country.

The final defence in WTO dispute settlement is authorised, state-to-state retaliation that governments can implement against trading partners. Despite being critical to dispute settlement, little is known about its operation. This volume brings together legal, economic and political perspectives on the topic from academics and practitioners involved in these actions.

Balancing the non-economic interests of host States and the treaty rights of foreign investors is key for regulators, policy makers and treaty negotiators. This volume examines how to maintain a State's right and duty to take action while respecting its international commitments toward foreign investors and controlling protectionist tendencies.

The Challenge of Safeguards in the WTO provides a comprehensive overview of the safeguard mechanism in the multilateral trading system. It explains at length its historical and conceptual foundations and elaborates on the various requirements for the imposition of safeguards and the conduct of safeguard investigations. The author draws on his practical experience in order to analyse WTO case law as developed by WTO panels and the Appellate Body and to provide practical suggestions for the resolution of various complex issues which have arisen in practice. He also considers the challenges faced by companies involved in this type of case.

The legitimacy of the WTO's decision-making process has always been questioned, and many have advocated public participation mechanisms as a remedy. Yves Bonzon considers the limits and potential of these mechanisms by advancing a conceptual framework which distinguishes the four 'implementation parameters' of public participation: the goal, the object, the modalities, and the actors. He addresses the issue of legitimacy by considering to what extent, and by virtue of which legal developments, one can see implementing the democratic principle as a goal for public participation in the context of the WTO. By analysing the institutional structure of the WTO and its different types of decisions, he then outlines how this goal should influence the object and modalities of public participation, which decision-making procedures should be opened to public participation, and how the mechanisms should be implemented in practice. Finally, he suggests specific amendments to existing WTO arrangements on public participation.

This book examines judicial acts infringing the rights of foreign investors that can give rise to international responsibility of the state. It addresses legal issues that will be of interest to academics, researchers, and practitioners working in the area of public international law and, particularly, in international investment law.

In the post-crisis, 'new normal' world, scholars are increasingly exploring world trade and globalisation narratives which are alternatives to the conventional neoliberal, Washington Consensus theories. Sungjoon Cho responds to this contemporary intellectual demand by reconstructing the world trading system from a 'social' perspective.

International law has historically regulated foreign trade and foreign investment differently. Distinct evolutionary pathways have led to variances in treaty form, institutional culture, and dispute settlement. With their inevitable erosion through the late twentieth to early twenty-first centuries, those weak boundaries have become porous and indefensible. Powerful economic, legal and sociological factors are now pushing the two systems together. In this book, Jurgen Kurtz systematically explores the often complex and little-understood dynamics of this convergence phenomenon. Kurtz addresses the growing connections between international trade and investment law, proposing a theoretically grounded and doctrinally tractable framework to understand the deepening relationship between them. The book also offers reform ideas and possibilities, providing treaty negotiators and other government officials with a set of theoretical insights and doctrinal models that can guide actors in building a justifiable and sustainable level of commonality between the two legal systems.

This book examines the foundations of international standard-setting from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Are the limitations imposed on World Trade Organization (WTO) members' right to regulate efficient? This is a question that is only scarcely, if ever, analysed in existing literature. Boris Rigod aims to provide an answer to this fundamental concern. Using the tools of economic analysis and in particular the concept of economic efficiency as a benchmark, the author states that domestic regulatory measures should only be subject to scrutiny by WTO bodies when they cause negative international externalities through terms of trade manipulations. He then suggests that WTO law, applied by the WTO judiciary can prevent WTO members from attaining optimal levels of regulation. By applying a law and economics methodology, Rigod provides an innovative solution to the problem of how to reconcile members' regulatory autonomy and WTO rules as well as offering a novel analytical framework for assessing domestic regulations in the light of WTO law.

Conventional wisdom on the insufficiency of existing WTO disciplines on export restrictions has triggered momentum on the issue. In this book, Ilaria Espa offers a comprehensive analysis of the scope and coverage of WTO disciplines on export restrictions in light of emerging case law. She investigates whether such rules still provide a sufficient, credible and effective framework capable of preventing abuses in the use of export restrictive measures on critical minerals and metals during a period of economic crisis and change in international trade patterns. Giving a broad overview of the export restrictions applied to these materials, Espa identifies distinctive features in the proliferation of export barriers and analyses the existing WTO rules to reveal their scope, gaps and inconsistencies. She goes on to present solutions based upon her findings with the aim of bringing more coherence and equity to WTO rules on the export side.