Books in the Cambridge International Trade and Economic Law series

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.

In recent years, investor-state tribunals have often permitted shareholders' claims for reflective loss despite the well-established principle of no reflective loss applied consistently in domestic regimes and in other fields of international law. Investment tribunals have justified their decisions by relying on definitions of 'investment' in investment agreements that often include 'shares', while the no-reflective-loss principle is generally justified on the basis of policy considerations pertaining to the preservation of the efficiency of the adjudicatory process and to the protection of other stakeholders, such as creditors. Although these policy considerations militating for the prohibition of shareholders' claims for reflective loss also apply in investor-state arbitration, they are curable in that context and must be balanced with policy considerations specific to the field of international investment law that weigh in favor of such claims: the protection of foreign investors in order to promote trade and investment liberalization.

This book analyses all major WTO provisions relating to the transit of pipeline gas and is essential reading for practitioners and regulatory authorities interested in the WTO's regulation of trade in energy, as well as legal and non-legal researchers analysing energy-related issues that are indirectly related to WTO law, and generalists in the field of public international law.

Prevalent poverty in less developed countries is one of the most pressing issues of our time and economic development in these countries is necessary to bring them out of poverty. As seen in the successful development cases of East Asian countries, international trade is closely relevant to economic development, and export facilitation and effective industrial policies have been the key to the successful development. Current GATT/WTO provisions facilitating development are insufficient and some WTO provisions prevent developing countries from adopting effective development policies. This book is the first attempt to suggest a comprehensive modification of the current GATT/WTO disciplines to better facilitate development. The book also examines the need to elevate the level of regulatory treatment of development issues by the WTO and proposes the Agreement on Development Facilitation and the Council for Trade and Development within the WTO.

WTO law sets the global minimum standards for trade regulation, while allowing some regulatory flexibility for developing countries. The exact scope of regulatory flexibility is often unclear and, at times, flexibility may be counterproductive to sustainable economic growth in developing countries. Undisputedly, developing countries would have some flexibility with respect to tailoring preferential services trade agreements to their individual economic needs and circumstances, but empirical data from over 280 preferential services trade agreements worldwide shows that this flexibility is rarely used. This volume clarifies the regulatory scope of flexibility for preferential services trade agreements between developing countries by linking the legal interpretation of WTO law with evidence from research in economics and political sciences. The book suggests that the current regulatory framework leaves room for meaningful flexibility for developing countries, and encourages policymakers and scholars to take these flexibilities into consideration in their design and study of trade policies.

The TRIPS Agreement was implemented in the WTO to gain access to a functioning dispute settlement mechanism that could authorize trade sanctions. Yet TRIPS and the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding are based on systems that developed independently in WIPO and GATT. In this book, Matthew Kennedy exposes the challenges created by the integration and independence of TRIPS within the WTO by examining how this trade organization comes to grips with intellectual property disputes. He contrasts the way intellectual property disputes between governments have been handled before and after the establishment of the WTO. Based on practical experience, this book provides a comprehensive review of the issues that arise under the DSU, TRIPS, GATT 1994 and other WTO agreements in intellectual property matters. These range from procedural pitfalls to substantive treaty interpretation and conflicts as well as remedies, including cross-retaliation.

This book discusses how international judicial authority is established and managed in key fields of international economic law. Its unique legal-centric approach sees the consolidation of judicial authority as a universal trend and its broad international appeal makes it essential reading for researchers, practitioners and students alike.

Locknie Hsu brings together current trade, investment, innovation, intellectual property, competition and public health issues that impact upon access to medicines in Asia. This book will be useful to academic researchers, regulators, law-makers and global organizations involved in the issue of access to medicines.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

After ten years the Doha Development Round is effectively dead. Although some have suggested that Doha's demise threatens the continued existence of the GATT/WTO system, even with some risks of increasing protectionism, the United States, the European Union, Japan, Brazil, China and India, among others, have too much to lose to make abandoning the WTO a rational option. There are alternatives to a comprehensive package of new or amended multilateral agreements, including existing and future 'plurilateral' trade agreements, new or revised regional trade agreements covering both goods and services, and liberalized national trade laws and regulations in the WTO member nations. This book discusses these alternatives, which although less than ideal, may provide an impetus for continuing trade liberalization both among willing members and in some instances worldwide.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

This law and economics analysis of contractual escape and punishment in the WTO assesses existing escape and punishment mechanisms, explores the systemic implications of flaws (in the international trading system), and offers a reform agenda that is concrete, politically realistic, and systemically viable.

Does public service liberalization pose a threat to gender and human rights? Aimed at trade, investment, human rights and gender specialists, as well as academics, this book seeks to answer this question and debunks the myth that the focus of the inquiry should be on the GATS.