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The US-China trade war instigated by President Trump has thrown the multilateral trading system into a crisis. Drawing on vast interview and documentary materials, Hopewell shows how US-China conflict had already paralyzed the system of international rules and institutions governing trade. The China Paradox - the fact that China is both a developing country and an economic powerhouse - creates significant challenges for global trade governance and rule-making. While China demands exemptions from global trade disciplines as a developing country, the US refuses to extend special treatment to its rival. The implications of this conflict extend far beyond trade, impeding pro-development and pro-environment reforms of the global trading system. As one of the first analyses of the implications of US-China rivalry for the governance of global trade, this book is crucial to our understanding of China's impact on the global trading system and on the liberal international economic order.

Liberalism and the contradictions of American leadership -- Power, multilateralism, and neoliberalism at the WTO -- Power shift -- Brazil : new drivers of liberalization -- China : a delicate dance -- India : balancing complex trade interests

Abstract
Cotton is one of the most contentious issues in the global trading system. Subsidies provided by richer countries have had a devastating impact on the welfare of poor cotton farmers in the developing world. Cotton subsidies have long been seen as a symbol of the injustices of the trading system—a harm perpetrated by the rich countries of the Global North against the poor countries of the Global South. This conception of the global cotton subsidy problem is deeply entrenched and has profoundly shaped contemporary debates about power and fairness in the multilateral trading system. As this article shows, however, the prevailing view of the global cotton subsidy problem is now simply outdated and inaccurate. Today, the biggest providers of cotton subsidies are no longer the United States and EU but emerging economic powers like China and India. These major developing countries are providing large volume of subsidies, which are distorting global production and trade, and harming some of the world's poorest and most vulnerable farmers in other developing countries. The cotton subsidy problem is no longer simply a North–South issue. Addressing the problem requires tackling all harmful subsidies, including those from large emerging economies.

Despite considerable tensions, China and India formed a surprising alliance at the WTO. Their alliance proved highly successful, bringing an end to American dominance and sharply curtailing the ability of the US to set the rules of global trade. However, the article shows, a key risk of soft balancing within an international institution is that, if successful, it may cause the dominant power to abandon the institution altogether. The US responded to China and India's soft balancing by turning away from the WTO, actively undermining its rules and enforcement mechanism, and pursuing its interests through bilateral channels. The article thus identifies a distinct and previously unrecognized wedge strategy—vertical forum-shifting, or moving the action from international institutions to bilateral negotiations, to split an adversary coalition. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

Abstract
There has been considerable debate about the capacity of emerging powers, such as the BRICS (Brazil, India, China, South Africa), to act as a unified and coherent force in global economic governance. In the case of the World Trade Organization (WTO), strategic cooperation and alliance-building among the emerging powers—specifically Brazil, India and China (BIC)—were essential to counterbalancing the US and other traditional powers and enabling the rising powers to defend their interests. However, as this article shows, the BIC alliance at the WTO has collapsed. The core issue that historically united the emerging powers and provided the foundation for their alliance was 'special and differential treatment' (SDT) for developing countries. Yet both Brazil and India have now defected from the alliance, abandoning China. Brazil was the first to defect, switching sides and realigning itself with the US; the change in its alliance calculations reflected shifting economic priorities and a fundamental reorientation of its foreign policy strategy away from its earlier Third Worldism. India then defected when its alliance with China, once an important source of strength in WTO negotiations, instead became a liability. As a result, having lost its key allies at the WTO, China is increasingly isolated in multilateral trade negotiations.

AbstractEmerging powers, such as China and India, have used claims of developing world leadership and South–South solidarity to strengthen their bargaining position in WTO negotiations. Yet analysis of the growing battle over special and differential treatment (SDT) suggests that such claims are increasingly tenuous. The question of how emerging economic powers should be classified and treated under global trade rules has become an acute source of conflict in the trade regime. The emerging powers insist on access to SDT as an unconditional right of developing countries. But in a debate dominated by the emerging and established powers, the interests of most developing countries have been largely overlooked. Drawing on the cases of agriculture and fisheries – two areas of international trade of particular importance to the developing world – I show that extending SDT to the emerging powers is increasingly problematic for global development. In these areas, many emerging economies are now among the world's largest subsidizers, and the harmful effects of their policies are felt most keenly by other developing countries. Granting SDT to exempt emerging subsidizers from WTO disciplines would therefore undermine efforts to use global trade rules to promote global development, as well as to protect the environment.

Under President Trump, the United States abdicated its traditional leadership role in the trading system, abandoning multilateralism for aggressive unilateralism and launching an active assault on the World Trade Organization (WTO). Most strikingly, the US blocked appointments to the Appellate Body, jeopardizing the WTO's dispute settlement mechanism. With the trade regime in crisis, a key question has been whether other states would have the will and capacity to lead system-preserving initiatives. While most attention has focused on whether China—widely seen as the chief hegemonic challenger to the US—would assume the mantle of leadership, there has been considerable scepticism about the European Union's capacity to exercise leadership amid the crisis. The EU has generally been seen as punching below its weight in terms of leadership at the WTO. In this article, however, I argue that it is the EU, rather than China, that has taken the lead in advancing concrete initiatives directed at defending and maintaining the multilateral trading system. The EU led the creation of an interim appeals arrangement to replace the defunct Appellate Body—in effect, creating an 'Appellate Body minus the US'. Although the rules-based multilateral trading system remains under threat, it is the EU, not China, that is acting as a system-preserving power, leading efforts to defend the established order.