Abstract
Governments have spent most of the post-Second World War period building an open and liberal trading regime. Since the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, some governments have backslid, especially in the context of trade in food. Adjudication by dispute panels at the WTO has largely dismissed these justifications as illegitimate, raising concerns that consumers (and others) are disenfranchised. The result has been a loss of credibility for the WTO and sometimes its demonization.
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Notes
- 1.
Of course, they often have considerable on the job experience in trade policy.
- 2.
In the wake of the Great Depression and the Second World War, the US and the United Kingdom worked hard to put a new set of international institutions in place that would reduce the likelihood of conflict in international relations: the United Nations (UN) for dealing with political conflict; the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for limiting the strategic use of currency devaluations; and the World Bank to deal with differences in levels of development. One other international institution was envisioned—an International Trade Organization (ITO) (Kerr 2000). The Havana Charter—negotiated in 1947—was the agreed architecture for the ITO. While the US Administration had agreed to the Havana Charter, it seemed clear that the US Congress would not ratify it. It was never submitted to the US Congress and the ITO was stillborn. One of the sub-agreements of the Havana charter—the GATT—became the de facto multilateral international trade institution (Miner 2007).
- 3.
General equilibrium is the predominant analytical approach.
- 4.
Using a partial equilibrium, comparative statics approach for the most part.
- 5.
According to Schmitz (1979), Haberler (1936) was the first explicitly to discuss the small country case. Of course, as Schmitz notes, the strong assumptions of the simple model limit its general applicability. One suspects, however, that these limitations do not receive much emphasis in introductory and intermediate courses in international economics.
- 6.
In the sense of consumer and producer surplus commonly used in the context of the partial equilibrium model.
- 7.
The case of a subset of consumers choosing to leave the market is only one possibility. Similar results have been found when consumers generally suffer a loss of utility due to the entry of foreign products with undesirable, but physically undifferentiable, attributes into the market (Hobbs and Kerr 2006). Similar results have also been found when a trade barrier that does not totally close a market is removed (Gaisford et al. 2001).
- 8.
Denoted by the cross-hatched area between D1 and D0 above the original price, PD.
- 9.
The US successfully invoked protection of public morals in its dispute with Antigua and Barbuda over online gambling. See http://docsonline.wto.org/imrd/gen_searchResult.asp?RN=0&searchtype=browse&q1=%28+%40meta%5FSymbol+WT%FCDS285%FC%2A%29&language=1.
- 10.
See Hobbs (2001) for a discussion of how marks of origin may mislead consumers seeking a positive quality effect from protection.
- 11.
The recent experience with US country-of-origin labeling initiatives for certain food products is an example of protectionism arising from producers (Kerr and Hall 2003).
- 12.
They also attempted to justify the ban on the basis of Article XX (b) relating to the protection of human, animal or plant life or health. As this is now largely supplanted by the SPS it was not considered in the exemptions outlined above.
- 13.
“A request for draft protocols resulted in an Ethiopian submission in October 1996 submitted on behalf of the African delegation and written by the Third World Network (TWN). This draft protocol, considered representative of the views of many developing countries, used as a framework the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal. As a result, the draft protocol treated shipments of LMOs (Living Modified Organisms; the CPBs term for genetically modified products) with the same degree of prescriptive regulation as shipments of toxic or nuclear waste. Further, this draft protocol placed an enormous burden upon the Party of export (the exporting country) and the exporter to ensure biosafety and to gain approval before any shipment of LMOs” (Isaac et al. 2002, p. 38).
- 14.
The US cannot be a party to the CPB, which is legally under the broad umbrella of the 1992 Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), because the US Congress has not ratified the CBD. Even though it was clear that the US would not be a party to the CPB, it was allowed to take an active part in the negotiations given the important place it holds in biotechnology development, production and trade.
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Smyth, S.J., Kerr, W.A., Phillips, P.W.B. (2017). International Governance in the 21st Century. In: Biotechnology Regulation and Trade. Natural Resource Management and Policy, vol 51. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53295-0_5
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