A detailed examination of the GATT regime for international trade, discussing the negotiating record, policy background, economic rationale, and case law.
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ...(GATT) was created alongside other towering achievements of the post-World War II era, including the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. GATT, the first successful agreement to generate multilateral trade liberalization, became the principal institution to administer international trade for the next six decades. In this book, Petros Mavoidis offers detailed examination of the GATT regime for international trade, discussing the negotiating record, policy background, economic rationale, and case law.
Mavroidis offers a substantive first chapter that provides a detailed historical background to GATT that stretches from the 1927 World Economic Conference through Bretton Woods and the Atlantic Charter. Each of the following chapters examines the disciplines agreed to, their negotiating record, their economic rationale, and subsequent practice. Mavroidis focuses on cases that have influenced the prevailing understanding of the norm, as well as on literature that has contributed to its interpretation, and the final outcome. In particular, he examines quantitative restrictions and tariffs; the most favored nation clause (MFN), the cornerstone of the GATT edifice; preferential trade agreements and special treatment for products originating in developing countries; domestic instruments; and exceptions to the obligations assumed under GATT. This book's companion volume examines World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements regulating trade in goods.
It is often alleged that PTAs involving the EC and the US include a significant number of obligations in areas not currently covered by the WTO Agreement, such as investment protection, competition ...policy, labour standards and environmental protection. The primary purpose of this study is to highlight the extent to which these claims are true. The study divides the contents of all PTAs involving the EC and the US currently notified to the WTO, into 14 ‘WTO+’ and 38 ‘WTO‐X’ areas, where WTO+ provisions come under the current mandate of the WTO, and WTO‐X provisions deal with issues lying outside the current WTO mandate. As a second step, the legal enforceability of each obligation is evaluated, and judged on the extent to which the text specifies clear obligations. Among the findings are: (i) EC agreements contain almost four times as many instances of WTO‐X provisions as do US agreements; (ii) but EC agreements evidence a very significant amount of ‘legal inflation’ (i.e. non‐legally enforceable provisions) in the WTO‐X category, and US agreements actually contain more enforceable WTO‐X provisions than do the EC agreements; (iii) US agreements tend to emphasise regulatory areas more compared to EC agreements.
The WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT Agreement) aims to tame non tariff barriers, the main instrument segmenting markets nowadays. Some of the terms used in the TBT Agreement to ...flesh out the commitments undertaken are borrowed from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and some originate in the modern regulatory reality as expressed through standard-development organizations. The TBT Agreement does not share a copycat function with the GATT though. Alas, the World Trade Organization's Appellate Body, by understanding words as 'invariances' - for example, interpreting them out of context (without asking what is the purpose for the TBT Agreement) - has not only exported its GATT case law but also misapplied it into the realm of the TBT Agreement, and ended up with significant errors. This article explains why the current approach is erroneous, and advances an alternative understanding, which could help implement the TBT Agreement in a manner faithful to its negotiating intent and objective function., The WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT Agreement) aims to tame non tariff barriers, the main instrument segmenting markets nowadays. Some of the terms used in the TBT Agreement to flesh out the commitments undertaken are borrowed from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and some originate in the modern regulatory reality as expressed through standard-development organizations. The TBT Agreement does not share a copycat function with the GATT though. Alas, the World Trade Organization’s Appellate Body, by understanding words as ‘invariances’ – for example, interpreting them out of context (without asking what is the purpose for the TBT Agreement) – has not only exported its GATT case law but also misapplied it into the realm of the TBT Agreement, and ended up with significant errors. This article explains why the current approach is erroneous, and advances an alternative understanding, which could help implement the TBT Agreement in a manner faithful to its negotiating intent and objective function.
ABSTRACT
Originally, the multilateral trading regime did not address state capitalism in a comprehensive manner, since none of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade founders had espoused this ...form of economic governance. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade did contain specific provisions dealing with state trading and with subsidies, but nothing more. This situation has remained unchanged over the years, except for tightening the screws in areas already regulated (like subsidies), even though the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization membership has become more and more heterogenous, with some members being overtly state capitalists. This was the case because these new members were either too small to really matter (e.g. Hungary) or because it was hoped that bigger players would transform into market economies (e.g. China). In hindsight, this has proved to be a grave error, since many of the difficulties that the world trading system currently faces originate in the unsatisfactory disciplining of state intervention in the workings of the economy of World Trade Organization members.
ABSTRACT
Recent debates on the operation of the World Trade Organization’s dispute resolution mechanism have focused primarily on the appellate body. We argue that this neglects the first-order issue ...confronting the rules-based trading system: sustaining the principle of depoliticized conflict resolution that is reflected in the negative consensus rule for the adoption of dispute settlement findings. Improving the quality of the work of panels by appointing a roster of full-time professional adjudicators, complemented by reforms to World Trade Organization working practices that reduce incentives to resort to formal dispute settlement, can resolve the main issues that led to the appellate body crisis. Effective, coherent, and consistent World Trade Organization dispute resolution need not include an appellate body. An appropriately redesigned single-stage process can serve just as well, if not better.
The Genesis of the GATT Irwin, Douglas A.; Mavroidis, Petros C.; Sykes, Alan O.
06/2008
eBook
This book is part of a wider project on the economic logic behind the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). This volume asks: What does the historical record indicate about the aims and ...objectives of the framers of the GATT? Where did the provisions of the GATT come from and how did they evolve through various international meetings and drafts? To what extent does the historical record provide support for one or more of the economic rationales for the GATT? This book examines the motivations and contributions of the two main framers of the GATT, the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as the smaller role of other countries. The framers desired a commercial agreement on trade practices as well as negotiated reductions in trade barriers. Both were sought as a way to expand international trade to promote world prosperity, restrict the use of discriminatory policies to reduce conflict over trade, and thereby establish economic foundations for maintaining world peace.
'Canada-Renewable Energy' presented the WTO Panel and Appellate Body (AB) with a novel issue: at the heart of the dispute was a measure adopted by the province of Ontario whereby producers of ...renewable energy would be paid a premium relative to conventional power producers. Some WTO Members complained that the measure was a prohibited subsidy because payments were conditional upon using Canadian equipment for the production of renewable energy. The AB gave them right only in part: it found that a local content requirement had indeed been imposed, but also found that it lacked evidence to determine whether a subsidy had been bestowed. The report is, for the reasons explained below, incoherent and could hardly serve as precedent for resolution of similar conflicts in the future. The facts of the case though, do raise legitimate questions both with respect to the specifics of the case, as well as of more general nature regarding the WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM Agreement), and the role of the judge when facing legislative failure. In this article, we provide some responses to these questions in light of the theory and evidence regarding industrial policy in the name of environmental protection.
The previous two volumes in The Regulation of International Trade analysed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the first successful agreement to generate multilateral trade ...liberalization, and the World Trade Organization (WTO), for which the GATT laid the groundwork. In this third volume, Petros Mavroidis turns to the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), a WTO treaty that took effect in 1995, and offers a comprehensive analysis that considers the historical context of the GATS, the national preferences that shaped it, and a path to a GATS 2.0.Mavroidis examines the GATS through its negotiating record, considering whether the GATS as it is can appropriately address the concerns of the world trading community. The GATS deals exclusively with non-tariff barriers (NTBs) - precisely the instrument that the WTO has not managed to tame - and one of some significance in light of the digital revolution, which has enlarged the scope of cross-border transactions in which neither supplier nor consumer needs to travel for a service to be consumed. Mavroidis argues that the GATS has brought about a platform to liberalize services, and has locked in some pre-GATS liberalization. What is missing, he contends, is a "GATS-Think" that would generate liberalization from now on.
Since its formation, with a few notable exceptions, WTO members have not been able to negotiate new rules on policies that generate negative international spillovers. The Doha Development Agenda ...negotiations, launched in 2001, became deadlocked in 2008. Problems extend beyond negotiations – other functions of the WTO are also not performing well. The dispute settlement mechanism, long perceived as the crown jewel of the organization, no longer is operational because of US refusal to appoint new WTO Appellate Body members. Calls for WTO reform have been mounting. This article provides an overview of the WTO reform agenda, drawing on the findings of recent multidisciplinary research to provide context for the papers included in this special issue on trade conflicts, multilateral cooperation and WTO reform.
Although the WTO has been effective in overseeing the implementation of the multilateral agreements concluded during the Uruguay Round, with some notable exceptions, including the Agreement on Trade Facilitation and the Information Technology Agreement, WTO members have not managed to conclude new agreements to liberalize trade in goods and services.
Abstract
The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Appellate Body has produced a volume-wise import ant body of case law, which is often difficult to penetrate, never mind classify. In his EJIL Foreword ...article, Robert Howse has attempted a very lucid taxonomy of the case law, using the standard of review as a benchmark for it. His conclusion is that the Appellate Body is quite cautious when facing non-discriminatory measures, especially measures relating to the protection of human life and health, while it has adopted a more intrusive standard (into national sovereignty) when dealing with trade measures (like anti-dumping), which are by definition discriminatory since they concern imports only. In my response, I share his basic conclusion and add that this is not the outcome of a process that mandates this standard of review but, simply, a political reaction aimed at placating the WTO membership.
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