Regional trade agreements
Mapping of Safeguard Provisions in Regional Trade Agreements
This study surveys safeguard provisions on trade in goods in 232 regional trade agreements (RTAs) notified to the GATT/WTO up to 31 December 2012. In particular it identifies those RTAs that modify the conditions applicable to the RTA partner (either substantively or procedurally) in the event that a global safeguard is invoked. In the case of bilateral (or intra-RTA safeguards) the study analyses provisions governing injury assessment causation conditions for the invocation of a measure and the types of measures that may be employed. We use the yardstick of GATT Article XIX and the WTO Safeguards Agreement to determine whether the provisions applicable to bilateral safeguard measures are more or less stringent than the corresponding multilateral rules. The study also includes an inventory of infant industry balance of payments and special safeguards applicable to agricultural products found in RTAs. We demonstrate through various examples that safeguard provisions have become more prescriptive in recent years though little homogeneity in their design is found even for a given country. In the case of global safeguards roughly a quarter of RTAs provide for the possible exclusion of the RTA partner subject to certain criteria thus discriminating against non-parties. In the case of bilateral safeguards some RTAs use looser language to define the trigger mechanism to invoke a safeguard and to determine injury standards thus potentially offering greater scope to use such measures. We found wide variety in the types of bilateral safeguard measures that are permitted in RTAs. A number of more recent RTAs tighten the conditions for application of a bilateral safeguard through limiting the duration of the safeguard measure allowing the use of tariff-based measures only and binding the use of the measure to the transition period. Other RTAs specify neither the length of the bilateral safeguard measure nor the conditions for its reapplication thus providing greater scope to impose such measures than in the multilateral context.
How to Design Trade Agreements in Services
This paper deals with claims recently raised in various circles that structural faults in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) have prevented WTO Members from advancing services liberalization under the Agreement. The GATS is generally associated in this context with a bottom-up (positive-list) scheduling approach where the sectors on which trade commitments are undertaken are selected individually. This is claimed to be less efficient in terms of liberalization effects than alternative approaches under which everything is considered to be fully committed unless specifically excluded (top-down or negative listing). However a closer look at services negotiations conducted in various settings including the Doha-Round process WTO accession cases and different types of regional trade agreements suggests that such structural issues have limited if any impact on the results achieved. What ultimately matters are not negotiating or scheduling techniques but the political impetus that the governments concerned are ready to generate.
Mapping of Dispute Settlement Mechanisms in Regional Trade Agreements
Regional trade agreements (RTAs) have become an indelible feature of the international trading landscape. Most if not all RTAs contain provisions that establish procedures for resolving disputes among their signatory members. Yet the design and functioning of these dispute settlement mechanisms (DSMs) and more specifically how they differ from the WTO dispute settlement system remain relatively unexplored. Existing academic literature has primarily focused on the narrow issue of jurisdictional conflict between DSMs of RTAs and the WTO dispute settlement system. Literature mapping out and classifying systematically the DSMs of RTAs is more limited. This research paper goes beyond considering the issue of jurisdictional conflict between the multilateral and "regional" regimes. We map out the DSMs in RTAs that have been notified to the WTO and were in force at the end of 2012 and consider a typology of these DSMs based on their nature and design. We also use the data obtained from our mapping exercise in two ways. First we identify trends and patterns of use either regionally or by individual countries of the different types of DSMs in RTAs. Trends are analysed in relation to five key factors: (i) evolution over time (ii) level of economic development (iii) regional characteristics (iv) level of integration (partial scope agreement free trade agreement or customs union) and (v) configuration (bilateral or plurilateral). Second we undertake a "nuts and bolts" analysis of the DSMs of RTAs by examining their approach to various issues in international dispute settlement. Our aim is to draw conclusions about the extent to which the predominant type of DSM in RTAs has features that are different from those of the WTO dispute settlement system.
Preferential Rules of Origin in Regional Trade Agreements
This study surveys preferential rules of origin applied by 192 regional trade agreements (RTAs) covering trade in goods notified to the GATT/WTO up to 1 November 2010. It takes into account the preferential rules of origin that were notified to the WTO; whenever known and available modifications to the original rules of origin have been updated. This study contains two basic features: a description of some key elements of preferential rules of origin in RTAs followed by an attempt to provide a reality-check of how these rules affect actual trade. That is done by an ex-post examination of data on the use of RTAs' preferences and in their absence of their margins of preference (MOPs). While the raison d'être of preferential rules of origin is the avoidance of trade deflection the practice in RTAs has diluted this objective and it would seem that preferential rules of origin are increasingly becoming an economic political and trade instrument. In its descriptive part the study identifies what seems to be a tendency to design stricter rules of origin while detecting concomitantly the inclusion in modern preferential rules of origin of flexibilities that provide through the rules of origin themselves a preference beyond the lower tariff rate resulting from the preferential treatment and mechanisms that allow the integration of third-parties into preferential rules of origin regimes. The reality-check part of the study points to the fact that much beyond the coverage of RTAs it is their effective implementation that poses a challenge to economic operators. Though data on the use of preferences is either not disclosed or inexistent they are nevertheless available for some economies. On the basis of existing data of preference utilization the analysis of the effects of rules of origin on preferential trade flows appears to give rise to a dual reality - namely a relatively high use of preferences in certain instances coexisting with preferences failing to attain their potential in other cases. As regards RTAs for which utilization rate is not available the paper analysis preferential rules of origin from a MOPS perspective assuming that MOPs of at least 5 percentage points would offset compliance costs and thus provide a stimulus to comply with rules of origin in order to benefit from preferences. The analysis made for 68 out of 192 RTAs do not allow any conclusion regarding that generally presented hypothesis. Finally the paper briefly outlines some suggestions for further action including the launching in the WTO of exploratory work on preferential rules of origin within an "open regionalism" scenario.