Suchergebnisse

China is incrementally developing a new, decentralized model of trade governance through a web of finance, trade, and investment initiatives involving memorandum of understandings, contracts, and trade and investment treaties. In this way, China could create a vast, Sino-centric, regional order in which the Chinese state plays a nodal role. Chinese state-owned and private enterprises have now internationalized and integrated within Sino-centric global production chains. It is a hub and spokes model, with China at the hub. In this paper, we first examine China's export of an infrastructure-based development model (Part A) before turning to its creation of a complementary web of free trade and investment agreements (Part B), and an indigenous innovation policy (Part C). The paper theorizes and empirically traces how this forms part of the broader evolving ecology of transnational trade legal orders.

AbstractThis Article applies the theory of comparative institutional analysis to evaluate the trade-offs associated with alternative mechanisms for resolving investment disputes. We assess the trade-offs in light of the principle of accountability under the rule of law, which underpins the goals of fairness, efficiency, and peace that are attributed to investment law. The Article makes two recommendations: first, reforms should address complementarity between domestic and international institutions; second, institutional choices should respond to the different contexts that states face.

On May 22, 2014, the World Trade Organization's Appellate Body (AB) issued its report on the controversial "ECSeal Products" dispute, finding that a European Union (EU or Union) prohibition on the importation and sale of seal products violated the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 (GATT). It did so, however, in a way that largely upheld the Union"s defense on animal welfare grounds, so that the prohibition remains effective. The decision marks the first time that the Appellate Body has found that a trade ban on animal welfare grounds falls within the exception under GATT Article XX(a) for measures necessary to protect public morals. This determination implicates the legality of future trade restrictions on animal welfare grounds, as well as restrictions imposed on human rights grounds, such as labor rights.