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At the 12th Ministerial Conference in June 2022, Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) reached a historic Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies that aims to contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This article provides the necessary background to the Agreement, tracing briefly the history to the negotiations. After a general overview of the Agreement, three key provisions of the Agreement are examined, namely, the prohibition of subsidies to (1) illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, (2) the fishing of overexploited stocks, and (3) fisheries on the high seas outside the competence of regional fisheries management organisations. The provisions of the Agreement on special and differential treatment in favour of developing and least developed countries, as well as notable procedural and institutional features, are also considered. The remaining issues still to be addressed at the WTO are highlighted in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the past two decades scholars and policymakers have argued that carbon border adjustments (CBAs) may remove the risk of carbon leakage. This article examines two of the legal and moral issues relevant to CBAs to better understand how CBAs may be implemented to support climate change mitigation goals. World Trade Organization compliance represents a conundrum for policymakers. Although a CBA may prove meaningful for greenhouse gas emission reduction, it could also lead to trade tensions if viewed as a disguised restriction on international trade. The impact of CBAs on Global South nations also presents a concern in terms of fairness and climate justice. In this respect, in addition to undesirable economic impacts, it is increasingly accepted that support must be provided to least-developed countries in order to achieve global net-zero emission targets. CBAs do not necessarily provide this. Ultimately, there are pathways forward to ensure that trade tensions are minimized and fairness and equity are achieved in implementing CBAs. As action on climate change mitigation is urgent, this pathway forward must be carefully but rapidly navigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2030 United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Agenda defines its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (sdg s) in terms of human rights and multilevel governance of related public goods. The global health pandemics, environmental crises, and geopolitical trade wars reveal governance failures and related ‘constitutional failures’ to protect human and constitutional rights effectively by democratic legislation, administrative and judicial remedies of citizens, and transnational rule of law. The sdg s require stronger, multilevel legal restraints on ‘market failures’ (like environmental pollution), ‘governance failures’ (like insufficient remedies against abuses of executive powers) and ‘constitutional failures’ (like neglect for transnational rule of law and the ‘Anthropocene’). Democratic legislation and citizen-driven, administrative, and judicial remedies must strengthen accountability of governments for decarbonizing economies and protecting human rights (e.g., environmental and public health protection). Worldwide protection of the sdg s requires reforming multilevel governance beyond Europe’s multilevel constitutionalism in order to prevent policy conflicts through transnational rule of law and ‘constitutional embedding’ of UN/World Trade Organization (wto) governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current, prevailing narrative on the WIPO-WTO relationship refers to "forum-shifting". The idea is that developed countries moved from WIPO to WTO in order to obtain stronger IP protection at the international level by joining trade talks with IP negotiations. As a result, WTO would have become the main international forum for trade-related IP issues. This paper argues that the forum-shifting narrative, despite its merits, may fail to catch the complexity of WIPO-WTO relationship. Moreover, long-standing issues, as well as recent developments in trade and IP, demonstrate that the two Organizations have been characterized by continuity and constitute in reality interdependent, complementary fora. This is not to deny the differences existing between WIPO and WTO nor to discard the merits of the forum-shifting theory. Nonetheless, it is argued, it is time to move beyond it in order to grasp the implications of the WIPO-WTO relationship towards future international economic governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multilateral negotiations are often facilitated through international organizations, but are not coterminous with them. This essay advances a few 'mid-level' propositions with respect to the negotiation structure that provides an overall context and the negotiation process where tactics guide the exchange of concessions. In terms of negotiation structure, a stable institutional structure is giving rise to a transitional one resulting in system spoilers in international negotiations leading to deadlocks and no-agreements. The bargaining phases are marked with games of chicken and grand-standing making it hard to effectively practice common negotiation tactics such as coalition-building, trade-offs and linkages. The article provides examples from the Uruguay Round and the breakdown of the Doha Round of trade negotiations through the World Trade Organization. The essay's propositions address the breakdown of existing multilateralism through international organizations, but also document the continuation of underlying multilateral principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the historical experience with and understanding of plurilateral trade agreements throughout the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and World Trade Organization (WTO) to better contextualise assessments of the continued viability of the single undertaking and the recent resurgence of plurilateralism in international trade law. Plurilateral agreements have been playing a significant role in international trade relations for the past fifty years. As such, the current wave of plurilateral agreements does not represent a sea change in approach to trade liberalisation, but rather a continuation of a process that originated many decades ago. Further, while the WTO agreements are multilateral in that they apply to all members, they can also be seen as plurilateral in that not all WTO members have identical responsibilities under such agreements. The article concludes that plurilateralism and multilateralism have much in common, and hence may be mutually supportive rather than binary choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the 2016 referendum on its continued membership of the European Union (EU), the United Kingdom (UK) is now withdrawing from, and negotiating a new relationship with, the EU. Both the UK's exit and future relationship with the EU must conform to World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. The WTO's rules are only partial and were not designed to facilitate a state's withdrawal from a regional trade agreement, the contraction of an area of liberalized trade, nor the (re)emergence of 'protectionist' trade barriers. The EU and UK must transcend this problem by creating legally binding rules in an otherwise vacant legal space. Yet Brexit is a shock to the WTO's rules and ethos: diplomatic negotiation is augmenting and replacing regulation in ways that affect the WTO, and the bilateral and multilateral agreements to which the EU and UK are both parties. This shock is a fundamental change to the prevailing trade orthodoxy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 29 May 2014, during the meeting of Supreme Eurasian Economic Council, the Presidents of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan signed the Treaty on the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). Presently, the EAEU consists of the Russian Federation, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and the Kyrgyz Republic. Nonetheless, the EAEU is lobbying for an ambitious plan of enlargement and is aiming to expand across the entire Eurasian region. The EAEU claims to be the second union after the European Union with the deepest integration aspirations, containing similar institutions and decisionmaking approaches. This article argues that there are a number of challenges for the effective functioning of EAEU and that its Member States are not yet fully committed to liberalization in practice, contrary to the aspirations they are advocating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines China’s participation in the trade, monetary and development assistance fields and concludes that China’s rise does not undermine the centrality of the Bretton Woods institutions or Word Trade Organization (WTO) in global economic governance. Whereas China’s participation in the WTO presents some challenges to the long dominance of the United States and the European Union, it reaffirms the central role of the WTO. China’s monetary strategy also indicates the continuing importance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the international monetary regime. Whereas the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) introduces some competition to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), China’s efforts in establishing new multilateral development banks are mainly driven by its frustration with stalled reforms of the Bretton Woods institutions. By and large, China’s economic emergence does not challenge, but reaffirms, the post-World War II global economic architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most favoured nation (MFN) clauses, extending the benefits of the most favoured nation to the treaty partner, have existed since at least the 11th century. From the 18th century on, mfn clauses were frequently included in trade agreements. The widespread use of the mfn principle has furthered the equal treatment of nations and created prosperity and peace. In the multilateral framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the mfn principle is a cornerstone, with only few exceptions to it. This article reviews the development of the mfn clause in major trade agreements in relation to historical events from 1648 onwards. The aim of this study is to determine what the consequences of protectionism, measured by unequal treatment of trading partners and protectionist policies has been in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

M. Sornarajah's recent analysis of investment arbitration as an offshoot of 'neoliberalism' is basically correct. But it attaches too much importance to the bias of the arbitrators and the procedural problems in arbitral practice. The controversy over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and investment arbitration generally is not about the niceties of arbitral procedure, the discretion of arbitrators or the pros and cons of the European Union proposed 'investment court'. The significance of investment arbitration has to do with the many ways in which already the very presence of a 'dis-embedded' and one-sided system of claims automatically skews public policies in favour of foreign investors. The juristic debate is but the surface of struggle over the role of public power and democratic governance of domestic and global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Port State Measures Agreement aims to influence fishing vessels' high seas activities, normally under the exclusive jurisdiction of their flag States, by withholding access to parties' ports to unload catch and resupply. This works inter partes, but many flag States are unlikely to become party to it. The Agreement assumes States may nonetheless exclude foreign vessels from their ports, giving parties leverage to impose conditions derived from it on vessels of non-parties seeking access. But this assumption is valid only if the port State retains its right to exclude; many have bargained it away, in old bilateral treaties or as World Trade Organization members with freedom of transit obligations. The settlement on terms favourable to the European Union of both the Swordfish and Herring disputes, representing the flag State in one and port States in the other, suggests that market power vulnerable to abuse, not jurisdictional authority, may have been the decisive factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This concluding article argues that while the actions of emerging powers have left an indelible mark on the way multilateral trade is governed, they have not been able to disrupt to any significant degree the deeper structures of power that underpin the World Trade Organization (WTO). While emerging powers have proven to be important players in the Doha negotiations, particularly in the closing stages, they have ultimately come up against a glass ceiling that prevents their further rise. This ceiling is the product of a series of institutional factors that combine to facilitate alterations in the general arrangement of members one-to-another but which prevent deeper configurations of power from being disturbed. The result is that while we may have witnessed some changes in the multilateral trading system, these have been more akin to a rearrangement of the multilateral furniture than to a fundamental transformation of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demise of the Doha round of trade negotiations is often attributed to deadlocks in agricultural negotiations between the developed and the developing world. Why has agriculture been so difficult to negotiate? This article explains North-South agricultural negotiations through the lens of coalition politics, especially the shift from bloc to issue-based diplomacy from the developing world. We argue against the proposition in the negotiation literature that multiple coalitions at the international level allow negotiators room to maneuver. Our study shows that bloc coalitions in fact allowed for compromise more than issue-based coalitions in agriculture, which are often supported by strong domestic constituencies. Empirically, the article focuses on the Uruguay Round when the North and South struck an agreement on agriculture and the Doha Round, which remains deadlocked. The article also provides an in-depth case study of India's agricultural interests and its food security program in the context of the WTO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) gains relevance as a rule-maker in trade governance, understanding the reform negotiations addressing its legal framework becomes increasingly important. This article examines how domestic ideas and interests affect the reform positions of two of the DSB's most active users, emerging power states Brazil and India. Regarding domestic interests, I draw on the domestic politics and two-level games literatures to argue that the amount and favorability of domestic sectors' experience with the DSB affects their incentives to lobby during the reform negotiations. Interestingly, this results in countries pursuing liberal interests within negotiations, despite having conflicting domestic interest preferences overall. Regarding domestic ideas, I find evidence that Brazilian and Indian politicians feel accountable to voters in the negotiations, contradicting claims to the contrary in the literature. This highlights the need for more research illustrating links between voters and officials in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International trade has become increasingly important to emerging market economies. Concurrently, increasing trade liberalization through the multilateral Doha Round, launched in November 2001, from the World Trade Organization (WTO ) has been a failure. The essays in this issue evaluate the role of Brazil, China, and India at the WTO examining in particular their domestic and coalitional constraints, the fairness and justice claims underlying their interests, and the types of identity politics that inform their negotiation positions. These three facets do not make multilateral negotiations easy but they do offer possibilities for future negotiations. Multilateral trade negotiations may not decline but the current era of 'managed multilateralism' has become complex balancing great and emerging powers interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the evolution of international attitudes toward child labour, and outlines its relationship to the global economy. It examines the way in which international treaties promulgated by the International Labor Organization (ILO) have conceived of child labour over time. At the national level, the most extreme pro-child labour position may be found in recent Bolivian legislation that recognizes work performed by children as young as ten years old. Much has been written on the problem of conflicting global values on child labour, but all agree that exploitative forms should be eliminated. The author updates her earlier recommendation that the World Trade Organization should place conditions on participation in the global economy by requiring its member states to honour core ILO standards. Eliminating exploitative child labour could thus be linked indirectly to the global economy, by requiring the elimination of children's work detrimental to the child's full development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This special issue of International Negotiation explores from different perspectives how multilateral trade negotiations, primarily within the World Trade Organization (WTO), can become more effective. The challenges associated with this task have grown, as the parties and issues involved in such talks have increased in number and diversity. The specific topics addressed include the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and domestic-level factors, agenda management, legitimacy and procedural issues, turning points, the challenge posed by the pursuit of bilateral and regional alternatives, and the question of gains to be had from multilateralism. The conclusions drawn from these studies are wide-ranging and relevant for multilateral negotiations generally. They highlight, among other matters, the significance of decision-making procedures used in the negotiation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract How does the agenda management process influence the effectiveness of multilateral trade talks in the World Trade Organization (WTO)? How can the all-important agenda be shaped so as to enhance the prospects of an agreement being reached? How the agenda is managed directly affects the negotiation process which follows and the eventual outcome. Yet researchers have paid little attention to the particular dynamics and challenges of agenda management in large-scale multilateral negotiations, and actual practice points to several weaknesses. This article proposes that the complexity of the agenda in multilateral talks needs to be managed and reduced in procedurally just ways if a successful outcome (agreement) is to result. It develops an analytical framework of agenda management in multilateral negotiations and conducts a structured focused comparison to explain the differences in outcomes of two rounds of WTO negotiations: the failure of the 2003 Cancún Ministerial Conference and the success of the 2004 Geneva negotiations in reaching an agreement. The findings support the proposition that a successful outcome depends in part on reducing agenda complexity and that this needs to be achieved in procedurally acceptable (if not just) ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of regional trade agreements (RTAs) which share similar ideals with the World Trade Organization (WTO) has added to claims of disintegration within international trade law. Notwithstanding the ambiguity surrounding the reading of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Article XXIV on RTAs, WTO members are continuously negotiating RTAs with objectives which have so far not received universal acceptance under the WTO treaty system. In the context of European Union (EU)-Africa trade relations, the December 2007 EU-Africa summit was expected to be an appropriate venue for leaders from both sides to resolve the controversy surrounding the idea of development-friendly free trade agreements between the contracting parties. But, the summit was wrapped up without achieving any clear answer to this issue. Similarly, at the multilateral level, i.e. the WTO Doha Development Round negotiations, which the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States have sponsored, numerous development-friendly proposals on RTAs stalled since July 2006. Consequently, in view of this controversy, if development concerns can be factored into economic partnership agreements (EPAs), what would be an acceptable threshold for such RTAs to conform to GATT Article XXIV requirements of “substantially all trade” and “reasonable period of time”? This paper discusses the idea of development and WTO compatibility in the context of the EU-Africa Economic Partnership negotiations. In view of the flawed dispute settlement provisions under the Cotonou Partnership Agreement (CPA), the paper further tries to answer the question of whether the CPA contains rights and obligations that need protection by individual EU member courts and may necessarily be enforced before the European Court of Justice. The paper ends with some thoughts on the post-EPAs adjustment programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Least-developed countries (LDCs) have been included in the multilateral trade regime since the days of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), with the majority joining during the 1960s and 1970s following their independence. The Doha Round of negotiations of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has focused significant attention on the role and impact of LDCs that are currently WTO members as well as the process of accession for those remaining outside the organization. This article examines the accession experiences of LDCs joining both the GATT and the WTO with regard to international development norms, and demonstrates that the manner in which the majority of LDCs acceded to the multilateral trade regime has enabled them to have a greater impact on the multilateral trade organization than would otherwise have been possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether or not bilateralism and regionalism have threatened multilateralism has been debated in the literature. In recent years, the United States has argued that the increasing numbers of regional and bilateral trading arrangements made under the Bush administration are 'complementary' to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Accordingly, the case of Taiwan's bilateral trade negotiations with the United States and its accession to the WTO provide a useful case study for examining the relations between bilateralism and multilateralism. This article not only aims to study the role of bilateralism and multilateralism in Taiwan's liberalization process, it also seeks to compare the two types of trade diplomacy in terms of power relations, decision-making and negotiation, and the influence of negotiation on economic liberalization. The article is divided into three sections: the first section focuses on US–Taiwan bilateral trade negotiations during the 1970s and 1980s; the second section mainly discusses the process of Taiwan's WTO accession; and the final section examines Taiwan's bilateral and multilateral trade diplomacy after its accession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its successor, the Word Trade Organization (WTO), have been the main forum of international trade since the end of the Second World War. The regime is unquestionably based on free-market rules and principles. Yet in the last two decades, formerly planned economies — including Eastern European countries, former Soviet countries and China — have attempted to join the GATT/WTO. To encourage their transition under the influence of free-market principles, and to be a truly global trade organization, the GATT/WTO has accepted applicants with a reforming planned economy. This article studies the evolution of the GATT/WTO's approaches to integrate non-market economies and shows that the approach to integrate non-market economies during the WTO era is significantly different than during the GATT. While special mechanisms were provided in GATT accession protocols to bridge different market structures, WTO accessions require non-market economies to convert their own market structures. This article holds that this intolerance of different market structures in the WTO reflects the collapse of embedded liberalism and the rise of coercive trade diplomacy. Multilateral trade diplomacy has therefore become a means of imposing a domestic restructuring of economic structures rather than providing a negotiation forum for trade liberalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why would Russia, a major power, be thwarted for fourteen years in its attempt to join the World Trade Organization (WTO)? Through a detailed examination of Russia's WTO accession negotiations, the diplomatic processes of the WTO's accession procedures are uncovered, showing that this diplomacy is best understood as a complex process where state-level factors and international regime-level factors, such as the rules and conditions of accession, interact. In the Russian case, the dialogue's length partly reflects technical difficulties in specific elements of the negotiations and partly a degree of ambivalence in the Russian government's attitudes towards accession. The Russian economy's high degree of dependence on oil and gas exports has taken the short-run urgency out of the negotiations from the Russian point of view, while reinforcing the medium-term case for accession within the context of a diversification policy. Russia's new President Dmitry Medvedev and new Minister for the Economy Elvira Nabiullina are strongly committed to WTO accession as a basis for developing the Russian economy as an innovation-based economy. Meanwhile, Russia's former President and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is sympathetic to that idea, but is inconsistent in his pronouncements. At the regime level, the key obstacles to accession in the past have been Russia's insistence on the freedom to maintain government agricultural subsidies and the reluctance of other WTO members to compromise on this issue. Since the Georgian crisis of August 2008, the United States has tended increasingly to use WTO accession as an instrument of political leverage vis-à-vis Russia. It must be assumed that Georgia will veto any Russian application for membership unless a satisfactory solution to the Abkhazia/South Ossetia issue can be found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on his thirteen years of experience as a Counsellor in the Accessions Division of the WTO Secretariat, Peter Milthorp describes accession as consisting of 'government-to-government negotiation, conducted at two mutually interactive levels'. The multilateral negotiations among the acceding country and the collective WTO membership correspond to Putnam's Level I; while the bilateral negotiations between the acceding country and individual members to agree on market access commitments require domestic bargaining and coalition building, and provide evidence of Putnam's Level II schema. Milthorp argues that the most arduous negotiations fall upon the government of the acceding country (that is, Level II), as it must develop a focused yet flexible negotiating mandate, implement economic reforms that may cause short-term hardship to some previously protected sectors, and ensure that negotiations progress steadily — all in order to retain political support for ratification. For accession negotiations to reach the end-game, negotiators must thus engage in both international and domestic diplomacy to create a balanced package that is acceptable to both WTO members as well as domestic stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]