This article deals with a challenge in drafting regional trade agreements (RTAs) in services that has been widely ignored to date: the need to comply with, and ensure consistent use of, GATS-based framework provisions. This includes in particular the requirement for the RTA parties to eliminate substantially all discrimination between their services and service suppliers. Yet the criteria that are used in individual agreements to identify the benchmark services and service suppliers quite often depart from relevant GATS provisions (Article V on economic integration in combination with Article XVII on national treatment). These departures may not only affect the WTO/GATS-compatibility of the RTAs concerned, but contribute to further fragmenting international market conditions. This is particularly unfortunate at a time when regional agreements are the only realistic options to overcome the negotiating stalemate at multilateral level. Hence, given the stakes involved, there is an urgent need for participants to (re-)consider the framework provisions underpinning their RTAs.

The WTO concluded in 2012 that subsidized aeronautical research and development (R&D) gave Boeing a head start in product development that caused serious prejudice to the interests of Airbus but later, in 2019, it could not decide how long that head start had lasted. Meanwhile, the WTO concluded in 2018 that launch aid for Airbus aircraft led to innovations that also improved later aircraft models, thereby contributing to serious prejudice to the interests of Boeing. Both conclusions relied on a causation analysis that considered the effects of technological innovation, which makes subsidies used for R&D particularly vulnerable to challenge. This novel analysis may be too broad for the actionable subsidy disciplines of the SCM Agreement.

This article discusses the decision of the Panel of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the EU–Energy Package dispute between the Russian Federation and the European Union (EU) and certain of its Members. This decision is an important milestone in the history of the WTO. First, it presents a good example of how international economic disputes concerning politically sensitive matters, such as energy security, may be resolved in a pragmatic way, by adhering to multilateral trade rules of the WTO. Second, as the first WTO decision to address a Member's regulatory regime for natural gas, it reminds the WTO community that energy trade is not an alien subject for the WTO. In this article, we discuss some of the Panel's findings that may have significance for other similar cases, and examine the implications of these findings for the EU's internal gas market and energy security. The Panel's decision is currently under appeal with a ruling by the WTO Appellate Body not expected before the end of 2019. Hence, the outcome of this dispute remains uncertain.

The article analyzes how Brazil has become an increasingly active voice for liberalization within global spheres of agricultural governance. With the focus on domestic institutional developments, we identify the gradual materialization of an agro-export policy network consisting of public and private actors. We conduct a periodization of the overarching phases of the policy network's development, from its incipient formation during the Uruguay Round to a high degree of organizational refinement in the new millennium. Through analysis of its external linkages, internal structure, and the distribution of resources, we examine how this network became an absolutely central factor in spurring the offensive orientation and assertive engagement of Brazil within the global agricultural policy arena. We thereby provide a domestically rooted explanation for the rise of Brazil as a central agricultural ‘player’, with the focus on the collective agency capacity of public and private stakeholders.

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have been a huge success and brought a great number of benefits to the whole world. With different kinds of incentives, SEZs have created favorable conditions in order to attract foreign investors. In this article, several specific issues are considered. First, whether SEZs are legal under international economic law (IEL). Second, what kind of specific issues they raise under IEL. Thirdly, what measures governments can take in order not to be challenged. The first section illustrates the definition of SEZs and their rapid development; the second section will consider the interaction between SEZs and international tax law, especially the base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) Action 5; the third section focuses on the relationship between SEZs and investment agreements and the disputes raised as a consequence; the fourth section will talk about SEZs and the World Trade Organization (WTO), as some incentives used by SEZs may not be compatible with WTO regulations. The article shows that SEZs can be harmful. For one thing, tax incentives applied in SEZs may lead to tax evasion, and the competitive circumstances between states may be changed. For another thing, the frequent changes of policies in SEZs may result in indirect expropriation, and investor-state arbitration under investment treaties can be used by foreign investors to protect their SEZ-related benefits. In addition, although WTO rules do not explicitly regulate SEZs, a number of measures, such as subsidies, do fall under the ambit of WTO rules, and these measures cannot be discriminatory.

This paper analyses how international economic law regulates measures aimed at the protection of domestic investors against foreign investors. It evaluates the logic of investment protectionism and assesses the incentives behind foreign entry barriers. It analyses and evaluates WTO GATS cases that dealt with the issue. It then develops a framework on how the facts of the China–Electronic Payments Panel decision could be assessed in international investment treaties. Several provisions common to those treaties would be applicable to the situation and the recent US–China Economic Agreement explicitly deals with the issue. However, adjudication under investment treaties would only be possible if some procedural conditions were present. The paper concludes that international economic law already covers a range of situations related to entry barriers to foreign investments. It also suggests that states can carefully tailor both substantive and procedural treaty rules to allow for coverage, or not, of situations involving domestic monopolies.

Recently, a group of eminent Chinese/US economists and legal scholars issued a thought-provoking Joint Statement on ‘US–China Trade Relations: A Way Forward’. However, the Joint Statement does not provide practical solutions to the real issues in the bilateral negotiations. Moreover, by granting excessive policy space to the two largest trading nations, it would encourage them to further deviate from WTO rules and undermine the multilateral trading system. Drawing on the Theory of Distortions and Welfare, we put forward an alternative framework for the parties to tackle protectionist and trade distortive policy instruments while leaving sufficient policy space for them to pursue non-protectionist policy goals. Our framework would minimize WTO-inconsistent outcomes and prevent further erosion of the multilateral system as we encourage the parties to negotiate in a WTO-consistent manner. Hopefully, this would also provide the groundwork for more inclusive trade negotiations under the multilateral trading system.