International trade agreements

International trade regulation has generally favored open trade policies but GATT/WTO exceptions are designed to promote environmentally friendly industries and policies that would otherwise violate trade rules. This study examines how the World Trade Organization’s Dispute Settlement Body has approached environmental exceptions in practice by analyzing key appellate body decisions over the history of the GATT/WTO system. Despite stated goals to promote sustainability, the way the Dispute Settlement Body has interpreted complaints has in some cases limited members' options for promotion of environmental policies. The paper in particular compares early environmental cases with the 'India Solar Cells' case, in which India argued a nascent solar industry in a developing country merited a protectionist exception. Empirical results of DSB decisions have shown an attempt to balance free trade with provisions meant to provide dispensations, with mixed results. The paper then puts WTO rulings in context with other multilateral treaties affecting the environment.

The aim of the paper is to stress the importance of transnational law in the applicability of various rules of international law to cross-border transactions, in order to disclose a coherent language of law. The paper will analyse and comment the Tribunal’s considerations with regard to the U.S. Claimant’s suffering of “economic harm to its investment through interference with its operations, lost contracts and opportunities in Canada”.

There is no question that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) greatly enhanced trade among the United States, Canada and Mexico. Still, despite the Agreement’s title, a sizeable portion of trade between the three countries is not ‘free’ at all. Likewise, notwithstanding successive multilateral trade deals and dozens of bilateral free trade agreements concluded individually by the NAFTA countries with other countries, a great deal of trade between the NAFTA countries and non-NAFTA countries remains subject to various restrictions. These restrictions include trade remedies, i.e. antidumping duties, countervailing duties, and safeguards.

The aim of this timely book is to bring together in a single detailed work the law and practice of trade remedies in all three NAFTA countries, including the role of legal and economic analysis in trade remedy determinations, in light of the relevant international trade rules at the bilateral, NAFTA and WTO levels and their economic and political underpinnings.

‘This treatise is without doubt the most comprehensive and well written on the subject... a tour de force that sets a new high-water mark in published works on the topic. Three Cheers for Trade Remedies in North America!’ – Rajeev Sharma, Bayer Inc./York University

‘This publication fills a void... superlative’. – Anthony Eyton, former Chairman of the Canadian International Trade Tribunal

This paper seeks to understand the relationship between World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and Regional Trade Agreements (RTA's).

In essence, it is purported that by allowing the formalisation of RTA’s, the WTO recognises the value they bring in trade liberalisation and economic integration. This is likely linked to the belief that trade liberalisation is more quickly achieved through regional trading blocs, and that these RTA’s serve as stepping stones for trade liberalisation at the multilateral level and global scale.

The paper concludes that WTO Members use RTA's to address issues such as (i) internal political and strategic objectives; (ii) allow for faster movement in the direction of economic integration; (iii) use them as insurance policies to secure better market access while avoiding protectionism and exclusion; (iv) send a message to foreign direct investment in the hopes of attracting it; (v) using them as mechanisms for counteracting domestic interest; and, (vi) using them to address other trade policy related measures.

Ultimately, recent evidence seems to suggest that WTO Members use RTA’s as a complex policy instrument, beyond seeking to simply secure tariff preferences given that the aforementioned issues are aspects less profoundly addressed by the multilateral agreements that make up the WTO.

This paper analyzes the effect of the departure of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP-11) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Some have called US departure from the TPP a geopolitical victory for China as a dominant trading power in the region. However, the effect of the US on TPP negotiations remained despite the removal of some provisions favored by the US. The rapid renegotiation of the TPP without the Americans has surprised some analysts and will have a major effect on the region. This paper identifies the continued effects of the US and the original TPP on the TPP-11 and the RCEP as well as trends in international trade regulation as a whole. It shows while American disengagement from the Asia-Pacific region has changed the trade dynamic, China nonetheless faces challenges and has a complicated place in the rapidly changing regional trading system.

The importance of trade has been noted for decades, and the relevance
of such trade to the small developing countries remains critical. With the focus
now on more reciprocal trade, the process of negotiations between Canada and
CARICOM member states has brought Barbados to an opportunistic juncture to
critically assess its own internal production, develop more targeted export and
trade strategies, while exploring all avenues of aid, which will ultimately
improve the existing product value to the Canadian market. Despite repeated granting of extensions to the original CARIBCAN agreement, Barbados, along with the rest of CARICOM members, remains unprepared to offer greater reciprocity to Canada and therefore face the possibility of losing their share of the Canadian market. Failure to conclude a reciprocal agreement will seriously curtail the export of goods to Canada, as they will face high duties, become uncompetitive, and erode the trade surplus
currently enjoyed. Faced with the possibility of being de-listed from the beneficiaries list
by 2015, the lost in export options and reduced advantages in others, Barbados
must ultimately seek to reach a speedy conclusion to the current negotiations,
while maintaining its trade in investment advantage (through achieving parallel
operation of the BIT), securing continued duty free access for its goods and
maintaining policy space for the services sector.

→ No fewer than 107 preferential trade agreements (PTAs) include provisions on copyright protection.
→ Some PTAs refer to multilateral copyright agreements or replicate their requirements, but an increasing share of them also provide obligations that go beyond multilateral requirements.
→ The most active proponents of copyright provisions in PTAs are the United States, the European Union and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).
→ There is a strong correlation between the propensity to include copyright provisions in PTAs and a country’s interest in copyright protection.

When the Cotonou Partnership Agreement was established in 2000, succeed- ing two Yaoundé Conventions and four Lomé Conventions, it called for fundamental changes in the longstanding non-reciprocal trade preferences that had governed the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) and European Union (EU) economic and political relationship for almost forty years. Two main reasons motivated this change. First, the impact of these unilateral preferences was rather disappointing: the share of ACP trade in EU market was continuously falling, and most countries did not manage to use these preferences to diversify their economic structures. Secondly, the preferences were not compatible with the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO), as they discriminated against non-ACP developing countries. For the first time, ACP countries were required to negotiate reciprocal, though asymmetric trade agreements, i.e. the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with a major (developed) trading partner, the EU, despite the fact that their own regional integration agenda was still largely in the making. This chapter provides an analysis of three recently concluded European Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between Europe and African regional groupings and countries. It explains the rationale behind and the process of EPA negotiations and provides a state of play of the trade regimes governing the relationship between the EU and African regions and countries, highlighting the key elements of the recently concluded EPAs and their likely implications for market integration and, more broadly, for regional integration.

The adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the United Nations (UN) in New York in September 2015 and of the Paris Agreement in December 2015 has put the sustainability and climate change ambitions and concerns at centre stage of the international agenda. International trade is recognised as an important means of implementation to achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and specific targets. For a long time, the European Union (EU) has been committed to the promotion of human rights and sustainability, including in its international relations, and has been a strong advocate of the SDGs.

Human rights clauses in EU policy have found some of their origins in the EU partnerships with the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP), as articulated in the Lomé Conventions and the succeeding Cotonou Partnership Agreement. Human rights and sustainability clauses have then increasingly been introduced in the EU trade policy regime, in its general system of preferences (GSP) and its free trade agreements (FTAs), and have become one of the key pillars of the new EU trade strategy, Trade for All, introduced in October 2015.

This paper analyses the content of the sustainable development and human rights dimensions of the recently concluded EPA by the EU with the East African Community (EAC), the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) and a group of countries from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and compares them with the Caribbean Forum (CARIFORUM) EPA, the most comprehensive EPA concluded so far.

Key messages:

Sustainability and human rights dimensions are at the centre stage of the international (2030 Agenda) and EU agenda, including in trade relations. These are part of recent EU FTAs and the EU-ACP EPAs, as well as EU Partnerships such as the Cotonou Agreement.
There are some concerns that African EPAs may not have strong enough provisions on sustainability and human rights, and that reference to the Cotonou Agreement may not be relevant after its termination in 2020.
While provisions on sustainability differ among EPAs, leading to some legal uncertainty, basic principles on human rights and sustainability remain valid beyond 2020. The various dimensions of EPAs should also be taken into account when considering sustainability.
Particular attention must be paid to institutional settings, dialogues, review and monitoring, aid and accompanying measures, multi-stakeholders approaches, responsible business initiatives, rendezvous and revision clauses, all most relevant for the sustainability impact of EPAs.

The Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) concluded by the European Union (EU) with regional blocs of African countries (and certain individual African countries) are supposed to do more than just boost trade between the EU and African countries. They are meant to promote sustainable development and poverty reduction, including through supporting regional integration processes in Africa, promoting the gradual integration of African economies into global markets and enhancing African countries’ ability to leverage trade opportunities for economic growth. Given the internationalisation of production processes, with 70% of global trade involving intermediate goods or services, increased participation in regional and global value chains has become a crucial part of African countries’ economic transformation and sustainable development strategies. It is therefore relevant to consider how EPAs might affect the ability of African producers and services providers to integrate into such value chains.

Key messages
The Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) negotiated between the EU and regional blocs of African countries are meant to promote the gradual integration of African economies into global markets, including by supporting African businesses to increase their participation in regional and global value chains.
However, these EPAs do not significantly alter market access conditions relevant to many African producers and services providers, and are thus unlikely to have major direct impacts, either positive or negative, on their prospects for participating in regional and global value chains.
EPAs could have beneficial indirect impacts on African producers and services providers by encouraging investment and by facilitating support to interventions and initiatives that boost the capacity of African businesses to participate in regional and global trade, but such support will not automatically materialise through the conclusion of EPAs.
There is thus need for development partners and other actors to complement EPA implementation with support for value chain development initiatives and awareness-raising and capacity building to ensure African business can take advantage of EPA-related opportunities, and for the establishment and use of effective mechanisms to monitor EPA impacts.

https://ecdpm.org/dp213