Mega-Regional Trade Agreements

Mega-Regional Trade Agreements
Author: Thilo Rensmann
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2017-07-20
Genre: Law
ISBN: 3319566636

This book provides an in-depth analysis of "Mega-Regionals", the new generation of trans-regional free-trade agreements (FTAs) currently under negotiation, and their effect on the future of international economic law. The main focus centres on the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), but the findings are also applicable to similar agreements under negotiation, such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).The specific features of Mega-Regional Trade Agreements raise a number of issues with respect to their potential effect on the current system of international trade and investment law. These include the consequences of Mega-Regionals for the most-favoured-nation (MFN) principle, their relation to the multilateral system of the World Trade Organization (WTO), their democratic legitimacy and their interaction with existing bilateral investment treaties (BITs).The book is intended for academics and practitioners working in the field of international economic law.

Mega-Regional Trade Agreements: CETA, TTIP, and TiSA

Mega-Regional Trade Agreements: CETA, TTIP, and TiSA
Author: Stefan Griller
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2017-08-15
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0192536583

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the EU and Canada (CETA), proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the EU and the US (TTIP), and the plurilateral Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) between the EU and 22 other States have sparked a great deal of academic and public interest. This edited collection brings together leading experts in the field of international economic law to address the legal complexities of these treaties and provide an explanation of their core principles. In the first two chapters, this book examines changing conceptions of international economic law and the main motivations for negotiating mega-regional agreements. In nine further contributions, international experts examine sectoral issues such as the trade, investment, and dispute settlement procedures envisaged in these 'mega-regional' agreements. The book goes on to consider the progress made in intellectual property protection, the problems associated with data protection, human rights, labour, and environmental standards, issues of transparency and legitimacy, and the relationship between CETA, TTIP, and TiSA on the one hand and EU law on the other. It concludes with four chapters that discuss globalization and other fundamental questions surrounding these mega-regional agreements from economic, political science, and legal perspectives.

Handbook of Deep Trade Agreements

Handbook of Deep Trade Agreements
Author: Aaditya Mattoo
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 768
Release: 2020-09-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1464815542

Deep trade agreements (DTAs) cover not just trade but additional policy areas, such as international flows of investment and labor and the protection of intellectual property rights and the environment. Their goal is integration beyond trade or deep integration. These agreements matter for economic development. Their rules influence how countries (and hence, the people and firms that live and operate within them) transact, invest, work, and ultimately, develop. Trade and investment regimes determine the extent of economic integration, competition rules affect economic efficiency, intellectual property rights matter for innovation, and environmental and labor rules contribute to environmental and social outcomes. This Handbook provides the tools and data needed to analyze these new dimensions of integration and to assess the content and consequences of DTAs. The Handbook and the accompanying database are the result of collaboration between experts in different policy areas from academia and other international organizations, including the International Trade Centre (ITC), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and World Trade Organization (WTO).

African Regional Trade Agreements as Legal Regimes

African Regional Trade Agreements as Legal Regimes
Author: James Thuo Gathii
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 525
Release: 2011-07-21
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1139498592

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.

Trade Regionalism in the Asia-Pacific

Trade Regionalism in the Asia-Pacific
Author: Sanchita Basu Das
Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2016-04-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9814695440

Asia has witnessed a proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) since the turn of the millennium. The first regional agreement — the ASEAN FTA — was transformed into the ASEAN Economic Community at the end of 2015. In the meantime, ASEAN forged five ASEAN+1 FTAs and began to negotiate a sixteen-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement. In parallel, the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), supporting U.S. foreign policy of “Pivot to Asia”, was broadly agreed in October 2015. The RCEP and the TPP are accompanied by other mega-regional integration processes developing elsewhere in the world, including the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership for the European Union and the United States, and the Pacific Alliance among four Latin American member states. Meanwhile, APEC is also striving to meet its Bogor Goal targets and create a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific. Each of these mega-regionals aims to achieve greater trade and investment liberalization and facilitation and more harmonized trade and investment rules so that all member economies can participate in the global value chain of production. Instead of undermining, these regional exercises can be building blocks for a more liberal global trading system supported by the World Trade Organization. This book ruminates on these regional agreements, their economic and strategic rationales and challenges during negotiations and afterwards. The book brings together eminent scholars and experts to deepen our understanding of the complex nature of the mega-regional trade agreements and their implications. It is useful both for the academic and research community and for policymakers who focus on trade and economic cooperation issues.

Megaregulation Contested

Megaregulation Contested
Author: Benedict Kingsbury
Publisher:
Total Pages: 753
Release: 2019
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0198825293

The Japan-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPPA) of 2018 is the most far-reaching 'megaregional' economic agreement in force, with several major countries beyond its eleven negotiating countries also interested. Still bearing the stamp of the original US involvement before the Trump-era reversal, TPP is the first instance of 'megaregulation': a demanding combination of inter-state economic ordering and national regulatory governance on a highly ambitious substantive and trans-regional scale. Its text and ambition have influenced other negotiations ranging from the Japan-EU Agreement (JEEPA) and the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) to the projected Pan-Asian Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). This book provides an extensive analysis of TPP as a megaregulatory project for channelling and managing new pressures of globalization, and of core critical arguments made against economic megaregulation from standpoints of development, inequality, labour rights, environmental interests, corporate capture, and elite governance. Specialized chapters cover supply chains, digital economy, trade facilitation, intellectual property, currency levels, competition and state-owned enterprises, government procurement, investment, prescriptions for national regulation, and the TPP institutions. Country studies include detailed analyses of TPP-related politics and approaches in Japan, Mexico, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and Thailand. Contributors include leading practitioners and scholars in law, economics, and political science. At a time when the WTO and other global-scale institutions are struggling with economic nationalism and geopolitics, and bilateral and regional agreements are pressed by public disagreement and incompatibility with digital and capital and value chain flows, the megaregional ambition of TPP is increasingly important as a precedent requiring the close scrutiny this book presents.

Regional Trade Agreements and the WTO Legal System

Regional Trade Agreements and the WTO Legal System
Author: Lorand Bartels
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 648
Release: 2006
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

'Regional Trade Agreements and the WTO Legal System' introduces the economic & political underpinnings of regional trade agreements, their constitutional functions, & their role as a locus for integrating trade & human rights.

A World Trade Organization for the 21st Century

A World Trade Organization for the 21st Century
Author: Richard Baldwin
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2014-11-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1783479280

ø Policy makers will benefit from the expert knowledge and policy lessons presented in this book, and development economists and researchers will profit from its critical examination of the world trading system. Undergraduate and postgraduate studen

Preference Erosion and Multilateral Trade Liberalization

Preference Erosion and Multilateral Trade Liberalization
Author: Joseph F. Francois
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 38
Release: 2005
Genre: Access
ISBN:

Because of concern that OECD tariff reductions will translate into worsening export performance for the least developed countries, trade preferences have proven a stumbling block to developing country support for multilateral liberalization. The authors examine the actual scope for preference erosion, including an econometric assessment of the actual utilization and the scope for erosion estimated by modeling full elimination of OECD tariffs, and hence full most-favored-nation liberalization-based preference erosion. Preferences are underutilized due to administrative burden-estimated to be at least 4 percent on average-reducing the magnitude of erosion costs significantly. For those products where preferences are used (are of value), the primary negative impact follows from erosion of EU preferences. This suggests the erosion problem is primarily bilateral rather than a WTO-based concern.

Paradigm Shift in International Economic Law Rule-Making

Paradigm Shift in International Economic Law Rule-Making
Author: Julien Chaisse
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 515
Release: 2017-11-13
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9811067317

The TPP was negotiated among 12 economically diverse countries, including some most highly developed and rich countries (i.e., the United States, Japan, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Singapore), some newly industrialized countries (i.e., Mexico and Malaysia), and some less-developed countries (i.e., Peru, Chile, and Vietnam). A new paradigm created in this context is that countries with vastly different economic developments can actually agree on a set of very high standards to regulate their economic activities, to liberalize their trade, and to protect intellectual property and foreign investment. The contents of the TPP also reflect its status of being a “new paradigm” as the “21st-Century Trade Agreement” and being a pioneer in rule making in many key regulatory areas. These include not only the improved and enhanced rules on traditional issues already covered by the WTO , such as goods, services, and IP rights, but also the carefully designed rules in areas that have never been addressed in the WTO or comprehensively covered in other FTAs , such as state-owned enterprises, electronic commerce, and labor and environmental issues. Although the United States has withdrawn from the TPP, the remaining countries are still putting efforts into establishing a TPP without the United States or a TPP with China. Economically speaking, the current 11 parties account for about 20 % of the global economy. If such agreement is put into force, there will be significant implications for the region, for the multilateral system, and even for other FTAs. The book addresses the potential of the TPP to change the ways trade and investments are conducted and argues for its potential to be the start of an international trade/economic law revolution. The book elaborates the relationship between the TPP and other existing trade agreements such as the WTO and other FTAs and explains how the TPP is to deal with traditional and new issues. Taken together, the authors argue that the implications of the TPP go beyond its current membership. It is hoped that the book will make an important contribution to the field of international economic law.