The economic reforms of China in 1978 and Vietnam in 1986 have spurred the emergence of privately owned enterprises, leading to increased competition across state-owned and privately owned enterprises under communist authoritarian regimes. Upon joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), both countries faced unavoidable international competition, particularly excelling in labor-intensive manufacturing industries due to low labor costs. China’s pragmatic approach to market-oriented forces has resulted in a growth gap favoring China over Vietnam. Despite this, both nations have made significant economic strides, transitioning to fast-growing middle-income countries and reducing global inequality. The onset of the US–China trade war in 2018 has seen Vietnam emerge as a major beneficiary, challenging China’s dominance in labor-intensive manufacturing industries. This shift highlights the potential for hegemonic transitions in competition dynamics. Additionally, this chapter illuminates pre-reform competition in both countries, where shortages of goods led to resource competition among citizens – an aspect often overlooked in existing literature focused on market competition post-reform.

International trade law is a subset of public international law and consists of the rules governing trade between nations. Historically this area of law was primarily concerned with trade in goods, but now includes trade in services (effectively the cross-border supply and consumption of services) and trade in intellectual property. International trade law has relevance to other fields of international economic law, including investment law. However, the focus of this chapter is on trade law as conducted under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO), an organisation that commenced on 1 January 1995. This chapter briefly introduces these concepts, and then explains the current structure of the WTO. It then covers the core disciplines of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 and the main exceptions to these disciplines, before turning to the safeguards, dumping and subsidies regimes. The chapter then introduces the two agreements that cover regulatory standards at the WTO, and finally provides an overview of the General Agreement on Trade in Services.

The peace agreement signed by the Colombian government and the FARC guerrilla group in 2016 marked a historic turning point for the country and its long history of civil war. The Colombian state agreed with the FARC to carry out a rural reform to ensure redistribution and access to land, the right to food and a boost to the rural economy that would allow farmers to live in dignity. The peace agreement includes commitments to change some elements of the state’s current agricultural and industrial policies, which could raise questions from Colombia’s trading partners about their trade-related implications. This chapter argues that such measures are consistent with Colombia’s obligations under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture and Colombia’s preferential trade agreements. Right to food measures (such as domestic support for small agricultural producers in the 2016 Peace Agreement’s rural reform) are within policy space under the Agreement on Agriculture because they do not affect international trade. Other government policies fall within Colombia’s international trade commitments because they aim to enable a food economy system in which rural communities can harvest their food and build improved productivity networks that meet their economic and social needs. This chapter shows how local attempts to implement a particular agricultural policy are framed within international trade rules.

The authors – Iranian lawyers working in international trade law – examine the rule-of-law effects of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which limited Iran’s enrichment activities and implemented enhanced monitoring of its nuclear program in exchange for relief from all UN and European Union nuclear-related sanctions. From January 16, 2016, financial transactions and a range of associated service sectors in Iran were opened up for international trade. These included banking and insurance; oil, gas, and the petrochemical sector; shipping and transport sectors; metals; and software. At the same time, restrictions on the transfer of sensitive goods and ballistic missiles, as well as measures against certain entities, remained in force. The US withdrawal from the agreement in 2018 has led to increased trade between Iran China, and, overall, has reversed the Iranian state’s forced withdrawal from certain branches of the economy, thereby resolidifying both its political and economic power.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) regime has a significant role to play in disciplining secondary sanctions. It provides substantial standards and procedures that differ from and supplement applicable standards and potential remedies under general public international law. The WTO system may address the specifics of secondary sanctions in different ways. In this chapter three perspectives are discussed in this regard. First, it is observed that non-discrimination standards in trade law may capture what appears to be unfair about secondary sanctions, as such standards would fail to detect discrimination, where all WTO Members – target Members and third Members – would be sanctioned alike. Second, however, WTO exception clauses can take into consideration that secondary sanctions are significantly more distant in terms of a connection between the measure and a legitimate policy objective as required under standards of good faith. Third and relating to fairness, WTO dispute settlement would open an opportunity for affected Members to seek a rebalancing of rights and obligations even in cases where a measure would be considered to conform to WTO rules.

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the contemporary political debates surrounding globalisation. It illustrates the main features of protests against the social consequences of a globalised economy, and it identifies some of the key political issues that scholars and students of International Relations must face when addressing the promotion of justice and effective governance within a more densely connected world.

In this chapter, Aris Georgopoulos and Petros Mavroidis examine the contribution of the WTO dispute settlement body to the resolution of trade disputes. This chapter documents the problems and challenges faced by the WTO’s dispute settlement body and reveals their debilitating impact on its work. This chapter then puts forward concrete proposals for the establishment of a new WTO Court and explains why such a course of action has a realistic chance of breaking the current impasse and creating an effective dispute settlement body for trade disputes.

The conclusion that China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) was a failure from a US perspective stems from: 1) loading too many issues and expectations—including an entire panoply of national security and geostrategic concerns—on to the WTO and its trade-rules-based, binding dispute settlement system to address; 2) failure by the United States and the rest of the world to use the tools available as a result of China’s accession to the WTO to both protect their domestic markets and hold China to account for its WTO commitments; and 3) China’s U-turn away from market-economy reforms to a much more state-centric, Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-run the economy. Addressing the United States’ concerns with China will require working to strengthen the WTO and then using it to take on a more limited set of trade concerns while using other tools to address broader concerns over China, both bilaterally and in conjunction with allies and partners.

The conclusion that China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) was a failure from a US perspective stems from: 1) loading too many issues and expectations—including an entire panoply of national security and geostrategic concerns—on to the WTO and its trade-rules-based, binding dispute settlement system to address; 2) failure by the United States and the rest of the world to use the tools available as a result of China’s accession to the WTO to both protect their domestic markets and hold China to account for its WTO commitments; and 3) China’s U-turn away from market-economy reforms to a much more state-centric, Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-run the economy. Addressing the United States’ concerns with China will require working to strengthen the WTO and then using it to take on a more limited set of trade concerns while using other tools to address broader concerns over China, both bilaterally and in conjunction with allies and partners.

China, the EU and the United States are the world’s largest traders, and many of the tensions in the trading system arise in the relations among them. Our premise is that reforming WTO is a necessary condition for the organization to be a more salient forum for the three large economies to address trade tensions, and that agreement among these three trade powers in turn is necessary to resolve the problems of the WTO. After a brief discussion of the global challenges that ought to be on the WTO agenda and of the systemic context, we discuss both how China understands WTO reform and how the other two leading powers see the China problem in the WTO. We consider how the three see transparency, plurilateral negotiations, economic development differences, fisheries and industrial subsidies, WTO working practices, and dispute settlement. We conclude by considering the implications of our analysis for fostering cooperation between the three major trade powers in the WTO.

The extent to which Chinese goods exports faced unilateral trade policy changes taken by other WTO members is documented here and decomposed between those policy changes that specifically target China and those that do not. Chinese goods exposure to measures taken by the European Union, the United States, China’s regional partners, and those taken worldwide are also contrasted, in terms of scale, discriminatory or liberalising treatment, as well as timing. The degree to which China’s WTO membership protected its goods exports from worse competitive conditions since the onset of the Global Financial Crisis is assessed and found wanting.

This chapter compares the trajectory of China’s real GDP per capita before and after WTO accession with the trajectory of a weighted combination of similar economies, using weights determined endogenously by data. Synthetic China A is constructed to provide the counterfactual of what would have happened to China’s economy in the absence of WTO accession, while Synthetic China B is used to reveal whether China’s post-WTO growth is unusual. We find that WTO entry has a positive effect on China’s growth. Compared to other economies with similar WTO accession dates, the economic growth of China was average within five years of WTO accession, but became exceptional within ten years of accession.

The extent to which Chinese goods exports faced unilateral trade policy changes taken by other WTO members is documented here and decomposed between those policy changes that specifically target China and those that do not. Chinese goods exposure to measures taken by the European Union, the United States, China’s regional partners, and those taken worldwide are also contrasted, in terms of scale, discriminatory or liberalising treatment, as well as timing. The degree to which China’s WTO membership protected its goods exports from worse competitive conditions since the onset of the Global Financial Crisis is assessed and found wanting.

This chapter investigates whether China assumes the role of a rule-taker, acts as a rule-maker or even breaks with the system governing foreign investment. Given its significant foreign investment flows and economic and political clout, a better understanding of China’s ideas for and potential role in the ongoing reform of global investment governance is highly relevant. An analysis of China’s international investment agreements shows that China acted as a rule-taker by broadly accepting the templates of its treaty partners, while clinging to a number of defensive positions. The most recent and significant international investment agreement negotiated by China, the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, signed in principle with the EU, seems to be following a template that largely reflects the preferences of the EU. China is also a supporter of the World Trade Organization negotiations on investment facilitation. China’s role in the Investment Facilitation for Development (IFD) Agreement negotiations should be characterized not so much as a thought-leader but as a key promoter of dialogue and negotiations.