Abstract This article examines the interpretative divergence in China – Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights , the first WTO dispute to address whether TRIPS obligations contain an implicit territorial limitation. The Panel adopted a strict territorial reading of Article 1.1, holding that TRIPS disciplines apply only to the implementation of minimum standards within a Member’s domestic legal system, and do not extend to measures where the effects are felt abroad. The Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA) arbitrators reversed this approach, introducing a functional, effects-sensitive interpretation under which Members must implement TRIPS in a manner that does not frustrate the enforcement of intellectual property rights in other jurisdictions. The article argues that the Tribunal’s expanded interpretation is inconsistent with the text, structure, object and purpose, and negotiating history of the TRIPS Agreement. A close reading of Article 1.1 demonstrates that ‘give effect to’ refers to domestic legal operability rather than cross-border consequences. The systemic design of TRIPS, establishing a minimum-standards regime primarily concerned with the domestic implementation of intellectual property protection, further confirms that it does not impose transnational enforcement obligations. The article situates the WTO dispute, China – Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights within broader debates on the multilateral governance of intellectual property. While acknowledging that cross-border spillovers are increasingly common in global standard-essential patent (SEP) litigation, it maintains that such challenges are better addressed through institutional cooperation and private ordering than through judicial expansion of treaty obligations. The analysis clarifies the limits of WTO adjudication in the intellectual property (IP) domain and reaffirms territoriality as a foundational principle of the TRIPS regime.
Abstract This article explores the global regulatory landscape for subsidies and countervailing measures, assessing its capacity to address challenges like climate change. While subsidies can effectively correct market failures and support public welfare, they also risk creating trade distortions and enabling protectionism. The analysis assesses the legacy of the Uruguay Round and the resulting Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures and finds that it does not sufficiently distinguish between socially beneficial and negative subsidies. Current rules often disregard the intent and actual impact of government support, resulting in inefficient remedies being applied against positive subsidies. Reviewing past reform efforts, the author presents the ‘renewed net subsidy’ approach – a pragmatic proposal that seeks to balance the flexibility needed for legitimate policy goals with safeguards against trade-distorting actions, aiming to foster more nuanced, cooperative governance of subsidies within the international trading system.
Abstract This paper introduces the Granular Trade and Production Activities (GRANTPA) database, which covers international trade flows for 3,124 products and 247 countries over the period 1995–2019 as well as domestic trade flows and production data for the same number of products and years for a subset of 35 European economies. The original data sources that we employ are Eurostat’s Comext and Prodcom databases. A gravity application delivers a large set of product-level ‘home bias’ estimates, which cannot be obtained without domestic trade flows. The average estimates on the standard gravity variables in our model (e.g., distance) are comparable to those from the related literature. However, our disaggregated estimates are very heterogeneous across products, thus highlighting the importance of our new database.
Are people who are more knowledgeable and interested in trade policy more likely to change their preferences regarding trade agreements compared to their less knowledgeable and less interested counterparts on receiving new information from politicians? This study responds to this question by developing a framework that distinguishes knowledge from interest and assesses it using an original survey conducted on voters during the 2020 US election campaign. Assessing whether information about trade agreements provided by political elites shifts individuals' trade preferences and whether knowledge and interest condition susceptibility to such information reveals that people knowledgeable and interested in trade policy are less likely to change their original preference. Together, the results sharpen the existing theories by establishing knowledge and interest as moderators of trade opinion change in low-salience trade settings.
The EU-Mercosur agreement is one of the longest and most complex trade negotiations in modern economic diplomacy. Launched in 1999 and finally concluded in December 2024, it offers a unique lens through which to understand trade negotiations in an era of geopolitical uncertainty, domestic contestation, and multilateral fragmentation. Drawing on the authors' direct experience in trade policy and negotiation, this article argues that the agreement was not delayed because technical solutions were unavailable, nor concluded because underlying conflicts disappeared. Rather, it moved forward when changing international conditions increased the political value of closure for both sides. Agricultural sensitivities, sustainability concerns, competitiveness debates, and Mercosur's internal coordination challenges remained. What changed was the cost of failing to reach an agreement. The case suggests that trade agreements today are no longer merely instruments of market access; they also serve as tools of strategic positioning, regulatory reassurance, and geopolitical signaling. In this context, uncertainty can become not only a constraint, but also a catalyst for cooperation and agreement
This paper contributes to the discussion on the link between international trade policy and food and nutrition security by looking at whether and how these concepts are addressed in Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs). We compile a dataset covering almost 600 PTAs that entered into force between 1948 and 2024, and apply textual analysis to show that the number of references to food security has increased over recent decades. To analyse the role of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) in shaping the rules and practices of international food trade, we investigate the placement, function, and significance of food security provisions in four case studies, looking at the extent to which the regulatory approaches of these PTAs align with or diverge from the relevant provisions of the WTO AoA. Our study reveals that, despite the growing prominence of food security and nutrition in PTAs, their regulatory approaches largely align with the AoA and seldom overcome its shortcomings. While some agreements introduce broader and more contemporary understandings of food security, binding commitments remain limited and structural tensions between national and global objectives persist.
Critical minerals are at the centre of divergent state interests defined by developmental objectives, security objectives, energy transition, and sustainability imperatives. Unlike non-critical commodities, they exhibit heightened strategic importance but suffer from significant concentration of supply chains, notably in China. As securitization of trade reshapes global supply chains, governments are looking beyond traditional experiences with international commodity agreements, towards modernized tools of trade and investment cooperation to secure reliable critical mineral supplies. This article offers descriptive and analytical insights into the consequent non-binding international instruments on critical minerals, concluded by the most active participants in this topic: the United States, the EU, Japan, Canada, and Australia, who are amongst the largest demanders and suppliers of these minerals and are all economically developed. It finds that such instruments bear several potential systemic and institutional implications for rulemaking and governance in international trade, which include their ability to divert agency away from the resource rich, the concentration of norm creation and standard creation amongst a few, the phenomenon of 'selective de-legalization', and lack of transparency. By highlighting several trends and sources of potential concerns for commodity-dependent countries, this article urges a reassessment of this emerging framework advocating for the need to better balance state interests.
A large body of literature examines the drivers of individual attitudes towards international trade policies. This article contributes to this literature by exploring the role of border regions across the European Union (EU). Border regions offer a unique context for examining trade attitudes. Residency in either EU, non-EU, or maritime borders generates differential impacts on individuals' support for distinct trade policies. Focusing on attitudes towards import duties and EU trade agreements, this article demonstrates that individuals in non-EU borderlands and maritime border regions are particularly supportive of lowering import duties, whereas support for extra-EU trade agreements is largely uniform across regions, with only a modest positive tendency among maritime residents. Broader sentiment on trade shows limited regional differences, chiefly between EU-border and non-EU-border residents. Including a battery of control variables drawn from the literature, the article leverages individual-level data at the most fine-grained level available in the EU to explore these dynamics relying on several regression models. This article speaks to both the literature on trade attitudes and border studies by offering a conceptualization of borders that distinguishes between EU borders, non-EU borders, and maritime borders, each of which has distinct implications for individuals' trade attitudes.
Investment facilitation is an increasingly important policy tool to promote foreign investment. However, we know very little about its prevalence. This paper introduces a new dataset for measuring the adoption of investment facilitation measures at country level. The Investment Facilitation Index (IFI) covers 101 measures, grouped into six policy areas, and maps adoption across 142 economies. The paper outlines the conceptual and methodological framework of the IFI, analyses the current levels of adoption, and demonstrates the index's robustness. The data show that economies with lower adoption rates typically belong to the low-income or lower-middle-income groups, often located in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. This dataset serves as a benchmark for assessing the design and impact of international agreements, such as the Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement (IFDA). It can also support the IFDA implementation by guiding domestic assessments of technical assistance needs and capacity development.
Outside the conventional scope of national security, States characterize a plethora of issues as security concerns in present-day international affairs. While the securitization of unconventional issues has been studied extensively in relation to national security exceptions under economic treaties, States' use of unconventional security claims in invoking public policy exceptions, where the legal text contains no security-related terms, has attracted less academic attention. This article investigates the WTO judiciary's approach to unconventional security claims raised under the GATT/GATS general exceptions, focusing on energy security as a case study. It demonstrates how the WTO judiciary has used two 'old' legal techniques from well-established general exceptions jurisprudence to examine 'new' energy security claims: framing regulatory objectives and identifying origin-based discriminations. The article finds that the WTO judiciary tends to be more permissive with energy security claims that are more closely related to the conventional, defence-oriented security notion; claims that are more distant from the conventional conception are also given substantial regard, but subject to more cautious scrutiny.
To mitigate uncertainty, it is often assumed that governments negotiate ample flexibility provisions when entering new international treaties. Yet, the case of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) suggests that governments prioritize the more stringent commitments when faced with uncertainty. In this paper, we investigate the effects of uncertainty spikes occurring during negotiations on the design of 251 bilateral PTAs. Our theory proposes that sharp increases in uncertainty make governments more prone to signing deeper PTAs to emphasize their commitment to liberalization. In doing so, governments cater to firms' demands for institutions protecting investment, upholding intellectual property rights, and promoting regulatory harmonization. We find robust evidence that PTAs are deeper when the contracting parties are faced with uncertainty spikes during negotiations. However, we do not find equally consistent evidence that countries also make PTAs more flexible. While much of the rational-design literature has focused on flexibility as a tool to cope with uncertainty, our findings suggest that countries rather tend to tighten their international commitments in turbulent times.
The second Trump Administration, in office since January 2025, has disrupted the prevailing trade consensus. The corner stone of the new US trade policy is the re-introduction of old-style tariffs at substantial levels to create a so-called ‘tariff wall’ turning away from long-standing practices of tariff liberalization. According to the US Administration, the tariffs pursue multiple objectives. They incentivize re-industrialization, generate revenue, and lower trade deficits with many trading partners. The imposition of new tariffs is coupled with the pursuit of bilateral deals to extract business-type concessions from governments and to encourage investments into the US.
Frieder Roessler made an indelible mark not just on the Advisory Centre on WTO Law (ACWL), but on the entire rules-based multilateral trading system. He made unique, durable contributions that will continue to benefit the system for many years to come.
