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Books > Business & Economics > Economics > International economics > International trade > Trade agreements & tariffs
This publication contains the text of the WTO's founding agreement, the 1994 Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization, and its Annexes, including all amendments and additions since its entry into force until September 2017. These include an amendment to the WTO's intellectual property agreement (TRIPS Agreement) aimed at improving developing countries' access to medicines, the WTO's Trade Facilitation Agreement, which entered into force in February 2017, an amendment adopted in July 2017 to extend the frequency of peer review periods under the Trade Policy Review Mechanism as of 2019, and the amended Government Procurement Agreement. This publication updates and replaces The Legal Texts: The Results of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations, which was first printed in 1994.
Providing the first comprehensive examination of the key regulatory disciplines included in the new generation of EU free trade agreements (FTAs), this book investigates the EU's supposed deep trade agenda through a legal analysis of these FTAs. In doing so, Billy A. Melo Araujo determines whether there is any substance behind the EU's foreign policy rhetoric regarding the need to introduce regulatory issues within the remit of international trade law. At a time when the EU is busily negotiating so-called 'mega-FTAs', such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the plurilateral Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), Melo Araujo offers a timely insight into the important questions raised by such FTAs, in particular concerning the future of the multilateral trade system, the loss of policy autonomy, and the democratic legitimacy of regulating through treaty-making. The book provides a detailed analysis of the regulatory disciplines included in the more recent EU FTAs and explores the possible implications of such disciplines. Offering a significant contribution to a wider debate, this is a must read for those interested in the legal dimension of the EU's deep trade agenda.
In the Bretton Woods era, trade liberalization, the improvement of labour rights and working conditions, and the strengthening of environmental policies, were seen as mutually supportive. But is this always true? Can we continue to pretend to protect the rights of workers and to improve environmental protection, particularly through climate change mitigation strategies, within an agenda focused on trade liberalization? Is it credible to pursue trade policies that aim to expand the volumes of trade, without linking such policies to labour and environmental standards, seen as 'non-trade' concerns? This book asks these questions, offering a detailed analysis of whether linkage is desirable and legally acceptable under the disciplines of the World Trade Organization (WTO). It concludes that trade can work for sustainable development, but only if we see it as a means for social and environmental progress, including climate change mitigation, and if we avoid fetichizing it as an end to be pursued for its own sake.
Turkey and Iran tend to be rivals rather than close partners, despite sharing certain economic and security interests. For instance, Turkey supports the opposition in Syria, while Iran supports the regime. Turkey is further concerned about a possible nuclear arms race in the Middle East. U.S. and Turkish interests in the region closely overlap, but the United States should not expect Turkey to follow its policy toward Iran unconditionally.
The Oxford Handbook on the World Trade Organization provides an authoritative and cutting-edge account of the World Trade Organization. Its purpose is to provide a holistic understanding of what the WTO does, how it goes about fulfilling its tasks, its achievements and problems, and how it might contend with some critical challenges. The Handbook benefits from an interdisciplinary approach. The editorial team comprises a transatlantic partnership between a political scientist, a historian, and an economist. The distinguished and international team of contributors to the volume includes leading political scientists, historians, economists, lawyers, and practitioners working in the area of multilateral trade. All the chapters present original and state-of-the-art research material. They critically engage with existing academic and policy debates, and also contribute to the evolution of the field by setting the agenda for current and future WTO studies.The Handbook is aimed at research institutions, university academics, post-graduate students, and final-year undergraduates working in the areas of international organization, trade policy and negotiations, global economic governance, and economic diplomacy. As such, it should find an enthusiastic readership amongst students and scholars in History, Economics, Political Science, International Relations, Public Policy, and Law. Equally important, the book should have direct relevance for diplomats, international bureaucrats, government officials, and other policy-makers and practitioners in the area of trade and economic governance.
This volume is the sixth in an annual series in which top
economists provide a concise and accessible evaluation of major
developments in trade and trade policy.
In Power and Regionalism in Latin America: The Politics of MERCOSUR, Laura Gomez-Mera examines the erratic patterns of regional economic cooperation in the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), a political-economic agreement among Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and, recently, Venezuela that comprises the world's fourth-largest regional trade bloc. Despite a promising start in the early 1990s, MERCOSUR has had a tumultuous and conflict-ridden history. Yet it has survived, expanding in membership and institutional scope. What explains its survival, given a seemingly contradictory mix of conflict and cooperation? Through detailed empirical analyses of several key trade disputes between the bloc's two main partners, Argentina and Brazil, Gomez-Mera proposes an explanation that emphasizes the tension between and interplay of two sets of factors: power asymmetries within and beyond the region, and domestic-level politics. Member states share a common interest in preserving MERCOSUR as a vehicle for increasing the region's leverage in external negotiations. Gomez-Mera argues that while external vulnerability and overlapping power asymmetries have provided strong and consistent incentives for regional cooperation in the Southern Cone, the impact of these systemic forces on regional outcomes also has been crucially mediated by domestic political dynamics in the bloc's two main partners, Argentina and Brazil. Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, the unequal distribution of power within the bloc has had a positive effect on the sustainability of cooperation. Despite Brazil's reluctance to adopt a more active leadership role in the process of integration, its offensive strategic interests in the region have contributed to the durability of institutionalized collaboration. However, as Gomez-Mera demonstrates, the tension between Brazil's global and regional power aspirations has also added significantly to the bloc's ineffectiveness.
An assessment of the impact of NAFTA on Mexico and its implications for the broadening of hemispheric economic cooperation. Four years after the launching of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), debate over its costs and benefits remains intense -- as revealed late in 1997 when President Clinton failed to get Congress to approve his administration's request for a "fast track" authority to negotiate the broader proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). This volume of original essays attempts to understand why by looking closely at the effects that NAFTA has already had and sorting out fact from fiction. The first part of the book examines the impact that NAFTA has had on the Mexican economy, seeking to distinguish those trends that can be attributed to Mexico's participation in NAFTA from those that are more related to domestic politics and long-term structural weaknesses of the country's economy. The second part, using an interdisciplinary approach, studies the wider political and economic ramifications of NAFTA, asking how much NAFTA has helped or hindered the efforts to establish the FTAA. The essays together provide alternative explanations for the anti-NAFTA mood that prevails among important sectors and constituencies within the United States. The contributors are Peter Andreas, Denise Dresser, Stephan Haggard, Jonathan Heath, Sylvia Maxfield, Manuel Pastor, Adam Shapiro, and Ngaire Woods.
International economic law is one of the crucial branches of international law, and of major importance both practically and conceptually. This document collection brings together all of the most important treaties, regulations, and other documents in this area. It presents the key documents of contemporary international economic law in one single volume, so to provide students as well as practitioners with an accessible reference guide. The book will feature a brief introduction, providing readers with a 'roadmap' through what is perceived by many as the maze of international economic law. The collection brings together documents relating to the three main pillars of international economic law, namely world trade law, international monetary law, and international investment law. These are preceded by texts of a more general character, notably issued by the United Nations and clarifying the parameters of international economic relations. This broad focus enables readers to view international economic law in its breadth and to avoid the pitfalls of a 'compartmentalised' approach, which exclusively focuses on, for example, WTO law or investment law without appreciating their interrelation. By bringing together key texts of all three branches, the book should be invaluable to students taking general courses of international economic law as well as more specialised courses such as WTO law or investment law.
International trade and investment in services are an increasingly
important part of global commerce. Advances in information and
telecommunication technologies have expanded the scope of services
that can be traded cross-border. Many countries now allow foreign
investment in newly privatized and competitive markets for key
infrastructure services, such as energy, telecommunications, and
transport. More and more people are travelling abroad to consume
tourism, education, and medical services, and to supply services
ranging from construction to software development. In fact,
services are the fastest growing components of the global economy,
and trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) in services have
grown faster than in goods over the past decade and a half.
How can the poorer countries of the world be helped to help themselves through freer, fairer trade? In this challenging and controversial book Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and his co-author Andrew Charlton address one of the key issues facing world leaders today. They put forward a radical and realistic new model for managing trading relationships between the richest and the poorest countries. Their approach is designed to open up markets in the interests of all and not just the most powerful economies, to ensure that trade promotes development, and to minimise the costs of adjustments. Beginning with a brief history of the World Trade Organisation and its agreements, the authors explore the issues and events which led to the failure of Cancun and the obstacles that face the successful completion of the Doha Round of negotiations. Finally they spell out the reforms and principles upon which a successful agreement must be based. Accessibly written and packed full of empirical evidence and analysis, this book is a must read for anyone interested in world trade and development.
Bananas are taken for granted today as part of the diet of ordinary people in industrial countries. In the Windward Islands of the Caribbean, bananas provided around one-third of all jobs and half their export earnings - until recent WTO rulings began to undermine the industry. Much of this trade and employment has now disappeared as a result of these rulings; and at the end of 2005, the EU is due to give up the last non-tariff measures designed to enable this trade to continue. Unemployment, poverty, and further emigration therefore loom over these islanders, or the tempting alternative of growing and trading in illegal drugs. And all because WTO rules take too little account of the problems of tiny island economies and the human cost of rigid application of global free-trade rules. In this absorbing history, Gordon Myers tells the extraordinary story of how the US government, in response to grievances of one American corporation, led the World Trade Organisation to nullify a European Community commitment to protect the livelihood of small Caribbean banana growers. The WTO's own working practices also emerge as inflexible and myopic. The story illustrates the inadequacy of an international trading system dominated by free-trade ideology but lacking the flexibility necessary to enable very small and highly vulnerable states, like the Windward Islands, to receive the protection that they need in order to survive. Moreover, increasingly powerful supermarket chains are able to exploit this free-trade framework to insist on ever lower prices, to the short-term benefit of consumers but the serious detriment of growers in the developing world. This book is a call for new arrangements in the EU that will enable the Caribbean banana industry to survive beyond 2005, and for an outlook in the WTO that gives greater consideration to the needs of very small states with vulnerable economies.
This study guide compliments van Marrewijk's "International Trade and the World Economy", as it aims to review and deepen the student's understanding of the topics covered in the main textbook. It provides a set of questions relating to every chapter and these are sub-divided into four different types of questions: review, empirical, simulation and technical questions.
"If there is spin, there is counterspin: "The Selling of 'Free Trade' is a devastating unraveling of yet another Bill Clinton con job. MacArthur tells the NAFTA story in the voices of those who did the spinning and those who suffered from it. It doesn't get much better."--Seymour M. Hersh "A gripping and fresh analysis of the corporate construction of an onrushing NAFTA and the human damage in its wake. MacArthur demonstrates what happens when an underdeveloped democracy is confronted by an overdeveloped corporation-governmental oligarchy."--Ralph Nader, consumer advocate.
As the fallout from the Seattle meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) continues, John Madeley explores some key questions about the free trade that it advocates: will free trade in food help or hinder the abolition of world hunger?; who benefits first? the poor? or the transnational corporations?; will free trade help Third World farmers find new international markets?; or will the flood of cheap, subsidized food from the North eliminate them?; how can countries - North and South, rich and poor - protect their farmers?; and how can self-sufficiency in food production be achieved?;John Madeley shows that the food imports of many developing countries are rising sharply while their food exports to the industrial countries are not. He exposes the contradictions between Western governments' rhetoric about reducing world poverty and the drive to yet more trade liberalization John Madely is a writer and broadcaster specialising in Third World devlopment and environmental issues.
Free trade lies at the heart of the new era of globalisation. This superb account explains the theory of free trade and how it has been put into practice. The author reviews the history of 20th century trade agreements. He traces what happened to GATT, with its quite narrow ambit, before the USA pushed the world into the Uruguay Round. This renegotiation of the rules of international trade, enshrined in the World Trade Organisation Agreements, is now taking free trade much further than ever before. The author examines the benefits and hidden costs of the WTO Agreements in both economic and non-economic terms. He looks at their implications for weaker economies and their likely consequences in terms of environmental protection, labour standards and political sovereignty. But alternatives do exist, he argues, to an over-reliance on free trade. These include managed trade, fair trade and self-reliant trade. And he sets out a series of innovative proposals for reforming the basic building blocks for managing the global economy - the WTO, IMF and World Bank.
This book offers a crisp and thoughtful account of political phenomena still fresh in the minds of Canadians, and with continuing relevance to policy-making processes. As the first major work on the origins, strategies, and activities of movements and coalitions that arose in Canada and spread across North America to oppose free trade, it captures an important developmental period in Canadian political life. Focusing on an analysis of the Action Canada Network, Jeffrey Ayres adopts a political-process model to link the emergence of popular sector movements and transnational networks to constraints posed by the Canada-US FTA and NAFTA. His extensive use of popular writings and interviews highlights the personal reflections of coalition members and provides an intimate perspective on their strategies and actions. As a contribution both to the study of recent developments in Canadian politics and to our understanding of emerging transnational contention in North America, Defying Conventional Wisdom will appeal to readers across a wide spectrum of interests and backgrounds. University of Toronto Press gratefully acknowledges that this book was sponsored in part by the Association for Canadian Studies in the U.S. and by the Government of Canada.
An assessment of the impact of NAFTA on Mexico and its implications for the broadening of hemispheric economic cooperation. Four years after the launching of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), debate over its costs and benefits remains intense -- as revealed late in 1997 when President Clinton failed to get Congress to approve his administration's request for a "fast track" authority to negotiate the broader proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). This volume of original essays attempts to understand why by looking closely at the effects that NAFTA has already had and sorting out fact from fiction. The first part of the book examines the impact that NAFTA has had on the Mexican economy, seeking to distinguish those trends that can be attributed to Mexico's participation in NAFTA from those that are more related to domestic politics and long-term structural weaknesses of the country's economy. The second part, using an interdisciplinary approach, studies the wider political and economic ramifications of NAFTA, asking how much NAFTA has helped or hindered the efforts to establish the FTAA. The essays together provide alternative explanations for the anti-NAFTA mood that prevails among important sectors and constituencies within the United States. The contributors are Peter Andreas, Denise Dresser, Stephan Haggard, Jonathan Heath, Sylvia Maxfield, Manuel Pastor, Adam Shapiro, and Ngaire Woods.
This book traces in an accurate and objective manner the sequence of events during the last twenty years which have influenced the organization fo the Canadian grain trade. During these years problems arising out of the production and marketing of western grain have been under continuous review in Canada, leading at different times to royal commissions of inquiry. The production and sale of cereals have become such a vital part of the economic life of the three prairie provinces and, indeed, of Canada, that anything affecting this great industry becomes at once a subject of general interest. These twenty years have witnessed momentous changes. The period marks a shift from free trading on the open market to the compulsory marketing of Canadian wheat and other grains through the medium of a Federal board endowed with wide powers. Basically, this change stems from conditions arising out of the Great Depression and World War II. And in one form or another the Canadian Wheat Board will continue to be a significant factor in the marketing of Canadian wheat. Noteworth also have been the dramatic recovery of the Pools and the negotiation of international agreements; and, on the farm front, the establishment of a permit system to control deliveries of grain to country elevators, and the enactment of legislation to protect producers against losses arising from the hazards of nature.
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