Suchergebnisse

The initial leaps forward in international trade liberalisation were achieved under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) when trade barriers in the form of tariffs were significantly reduced or removed up until the mid-1970s. However, this advancement was counteracted by a new protectionism which surfaced in the oil crises and the subsequent world economic recession. The term new was not to indicate the novelty of protectionist tendencies regaining momentum, but instead referred to the ever more subtle instruments, deploying non-tariff barriers to trade. Among thes

This paper contributes to the literature on norms, arms regulation, humanitarian arms control, and arms control as governmentality by examining the different "Matryoshka dolls" of arms trade governance as they operated in the late nineteenth century. I suggest that analysis of practices in this era has relevance for debates about contemporary arms governance. The innermost doll is represented by a specific regulatory initiative, in this case, the 1890 Brussels Act, which represented an attempt to graft a regulatory arms trade norm onto an established and constitutive anti-slavery norm. The Act was also located within the second matryoshka doll, the broader approach to arms trade prohibition adopted in an era. Despite representations of the period as one of free trade in arms, I highlight extensive efforts to restrict the transfer of firearms to colonial subjects. Finally, I examine the third matryoshka doll, the way in which mechanisms of prohibition and permission constitute the practices of arms control as governmentality—the effort to define and manage which gradations of people can legitimately own, trade, and use which gradations of weapons in what contexts. Overall, the paper challenges the optimistic literature regarding humanitarian arms control and arms trade norms with three concluding implications: the merging of humanitarianism and arms control can reflect both good and bad norms; such a confluence is not necessarily incompatible with colonialism, racism, or imperial violence; and, such a merger is consonant with the maintenance of liberal militarism.

In a global economy and system increasingly defined by new developments and complexities in trade, whose rules and regulations govern that trade matter. The UK has embarked on a new post-Brexit trade policy, signing its first wholly new free trade agreements (FTAs) with Australia and New Zealand. It is also in negotiations to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) as part of the UK's aspirations to become an integral part of the Asia-Pacific trading community. This study's research and text analysis on the UK's bilateral FTAs with Australia and New Zealand reveals high levels of similarity with two larger regional agreements heavily imprinted with US trade regulatory norms—this being the CPTPP itself and the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA). The UK's revealed willingness to strongly align itself with US trade regulatory norms has important implications for the Asia-Pacific. It also raises some key issues on what kind of trade partner the region might expect a post-Brexit 'Global Britain' to become, and how the UK's deeper planned engagement with the Asia-Pacific could affect its strategic dynamics. This could significantly depend on how closely the UK is pulled over time into the US' trade regulatory orbit. (Pac Rev / GIGA)