Sovereignty and Complex Interdependence

2019 ◽  
pp. 201-230
Author(s):  
Charles Sabel
Keyword(s):  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Voluntary Association ◽  
Global State ◽  
Complex Interdependence ◽  
Rich Countries ◽  
Trade Partners

Even as democratic sovereignty and globalization are increasingly seen as incompatible in theory, this chapter argues that, in some important realms, they are proving compatible in practice. As tariffs have fallen to negligible levels, trade agreements among rich countries have come to focus on reconciling regulatory differences. In many sectors, novel forms of cooperation have emerged that allow trade partners deliberately to investigate and learn from one another’s practices, eventually recognizing the equivalence of regimes that are not strictly identical—and in the process extending domestic political oversight to relations among states while often heightening domestic accountability. The emergent institutions of regulatory equivalence suggest a practical, if partial, possibility for realizing Kant’s “negative surrogate” or federation of democratic republics, growing incrementally through voluntary association, as a substitute for a global state.

scholarly journals Trade, Climate and Energy: A New Study on Climate Action through Free Trade Agreements

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (14) ◽  
pp. 4363
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Dent
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Free Trade Agreements ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Trade Partners

Efforts to tackle climate change are taking place on multiple fronts. This includes trade, an increasingly important defining feature of the global economy. In recent years, free trade agreements (FTAs) have become the primary mechanism of trade policy and diplomacy. This study examines the development of climate action measures in FTAs and discusses what difference they can make to tackling climate change. Its primary source research is based on an in-depth examination of FTAs in force up to 2020. This paper is structured around a number of research questions forming around three main inter-related areas of enquiry. Firstly, to what extent are these provisions in FTAs essentially derivative of energy’s connections with climate change, and thus part of a wider trade–climate–energy nexus? Secondly, what kinds of climate action are FTAs specifically promoting, and how effective a potential positive impact may we expect these to have? Thirdly, are certain climate action norms being promoted by trade partners in FTAs and if so, then who are the norm leaders, what is motivating them, and to what extent are they extending their influence over other trade partners? In addressing these questions, this study offers new insights and analysis regarding a potentially important emerging trend in the trade–climate–energy nexus. Its international political economy approach and latest empirical research also provide a further distinctive contribution to knowledge in this inter-disciplinary area, developing new comprehensions of the relationship between trade, climate action and energy.

scholarly journals The EAEU Free Trade Agreements as a New Viable Format for the Russian Trade Policy

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 63-83
Author(s):  
V. N. Zuev ◽  
E. Ya. Ostrovskaya ◽  
V. Yu. Skryabina
Keyword(s):  
Trade Policy ◽  
Free Trade Agreements ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Regional Trade Agreements ◽  
Trade Policies ◽  
Regional Trade ◽  
Intensity Index ◽  
Common Trade ◽  
Trade Partners ◽  
Revealed Comparative Advantage Index

The Regional Trade Agreements (RTA) as a legal format of trade between countries has been actively developed within the last decades. Russian involvement in RTAs until recently was modest. However, after the EAEU creation in 2015, trade policies of the member countries have changed. Setting up the RTAs has become an important priority of the EAEU’s common trade policy. In this study, the assessment is made of the significance for the Russian domestic policies of the already signed and planned FTAs. The focus of the methodology of the study lies in computations of three trade indices: export significance index (suggested by authors and based on the revealed comparative advantage index), trade intensity index and symmetric trade introversion index, which were calculated for the totality of trade partners of Russia for 2019 (193 countries) in order to identify the most promising countries to conclude new FTAs. Authors come to a conclusion that the already signed Russian RTAs and newly planned Russian common FTAs on behalf of the EAEU have a potential to generate trade. Another important result of the study is that it provides the list of the first-priority countries for the new-coming FTAs for Russia and the EAEU partners in terms of efficiency in generating trade, that are - Egypt, Turkey, Algeria, Republic of Korea and Mongolia. The authors suggest to make similar calculations for other countries to support the revealed pattern.

scholarly journals Mapping the New Frontier of International IP Law: Introducing a TRIPs-plus Dataset

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Frédéric Morin ◽  
Jenny Surbeck
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
New Frontier ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Policy Communities ◽  
Ip Law ◽  
Trade Partners ◽  
Research And Policy

AbstractThis article introduces a new dataset on the intellectual property (IP) provisions included in preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and makes it available for research and policy communities alike. Several PTAs include IP commitments that go well beyond the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs). A sound knowledge of these TRIPs-plus commitments is essential in order to improve our understanding of what drives them and of their legal, social, and economic consequences. Yet, until now, these provisions have not been mapped in a comprehensive and systematic way. The T + PTA dataset fills this gap by documenting the existence of 90 types of IP provisions in 126 agreements signed between 1991 and 2016. We show that, even for like-minded countries, significant variations exist in their reliance on TRIPs-plus provisions, their degree of consistency across PTAs, and their preferences for some IP rights. We also find that strong TRIPs-Plus provisions are correlated with the depth of PTAs, the asymmetry between trade partners, and the strength of their domestic IP law. By making the T + PTA dataset available, we hope to create the opportunity for a new generation of research on TRIPs-plus agreements.

scholarly journals The Lessons of TPP and the Future of Labor Chapters in Trade Agreements

2019 ◽  
pp. 140-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Álvaro Santos
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
The United States ◽  
Labor Standards ◽  
Compensatory Mechanisms ◽  
Rules Of Origin ◽  
High Point ◽  
The Us ◽  
Rich Countries

Linking labor standards to trade agreements out of dual concern for poor working conditions in low-wage countries and unfair labor competition in rich countries reached its high point in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The US labor movement’s opposition to TPP shows the disenchantment with this agenda. Other elements of the agreement were seen as equally important to workers: investment, rules of origin, procurement, and currency manipulation. These new frontiers for labor advocacy in trade agreements highlight the need to re-balance how trade agreements treat capital and labor. A promising, though overlooked, feature of TPP was the pressure the US exercised to encourage domestic labor reforms—formally through a side agreement in the case of Vietnam and informally in the case of Mexico. The US withdrawal set those reforms back. The hardening opposition to TPP also made clear that rich countries’ workers expected losses from trade will not be made palatable in the absence of effective domestic safety nets and compensatory mechanisms. TPP’s reception in the United States was a resounding rejection of liberal globalization as we know it, and the CPTPP, unfortunately, does not seem to chart a different path.

Few and Far Between: Some Explanations of Health Provisions in Trade Agreements

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheikh Shahnawaz
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Health Status ◽  
Trade Liberalization ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Trade Negotiation ◽  
Health Concerns ◽  
Health Objectives ◽  
Trade Partners

AbstractThe recent proliferation of trade agreements and swelling membership of the WTO can be explained in part by the promise of faster growth and economic development that trade liberalization is supposed to deliver. But many countries enter into arrangements that fail to safeguard national health objectives. This article proposes some explanations by developing a formal model. It identifies a country’s trade negotiation capacity, the significance of its exports to its trade partners, and its public health status as important determinants of how sensitive its trade agreements are to its health concerns. Some examples are provided to illustrate the predictions of the model.

scholarly journals Heterogeneous Impacts of Free Trade Agreements: The Case of Japan

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Kenta Yamanouchi
Keyword(s):  
Gravity Model ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Free Trade Agreements ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Trade Creation ◽  
Trade Data ◽  
Trade Partners

This paper investigates the trade creation effects of Japan's free trade agreements (FTAs) using aggregate trade data for the years 1996–2015. We estimate various specifications of a gravity model. Our main finding is that the effects of Japan's FTAs are not clearly observed when the gravity model is specified with three types of fixed effects (i.e., exporter-year fixed effects, importer-year fixed effects, and country-pair fixed effects). In fact, the effects of FTAs vary substantially among trade partners and around half of the FTAs increase Japan's trade values. Our results also suggest that FTAs with small trade partners tend to have large effects on Japan as well as other countries. Recently enforced FTAs, however, increase Japan's import values more rapidly.

Mass support for free trade agreements and factor endowment

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 537-558
Author(s):  
Kim-Lee Tuxhorn
Keyword(s):  
Free Trade ◽  
Developing Economies ◽  
Free Trade Agreements ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Skill Level ◽  
Factor Endowment ◽  
Highly Educated ◽  
Economic Preferences ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Trade Partners

Does the factor endowment (FE) of trade partners influence mass support for free trade agreements (FTAs), and if so, how? Preference models based on factor endowment expect that individual attitudes toward trade partners should systematically vary by factors of endowment and respondents’ skill level. This paper provides the first systematic examination of the effect of trade partner’s FE on mass support for FTAs. Using a conjoint analysis design on a sample of respondents from developed and developing economies (the US and India), the findings show that respondents consistently favour trade partners with a highly educated workforce and a higher level of gross domestic product per capita. Moreover, preferences for these country attributes hold regardless of respondents’ skill level or their country’s FE. Data from a nationally representative survey on Canadian trade preferences offer additional corroborating evidence. Together, the findings offer limited support for economic preferences derived from factor endowment trade models, indicating that individuals, within and across countries, may share a common bias against trade with lesser-developed states.

scholarly journals David and Goliath? Small Developing Countries, Large Emerging Markets, and South-South Preferential Trade Agreements

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 574-588
Author(s):  
Daniela Donno ◽  
Nita Rudra
Keyword(s):  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Preferential Trade Agreements ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Export Markets ◽  
Preferential Trade ◽  
Surplus Labor ◽  
Large Populations ◽  
The Face ◽  
Rich Countries ◽  
David And Goliath

Abstract Has the rise of large emerging economies influenced the foreign economic policies of smaller nations? Many of the BRICS' (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) dominance in export markets for low-skilled goods pose a particular challenge for “surplus-labor” countries characterized by large populations of unskilled and underemployed labor. We theorize the incentives of firms and governments in surplus-labor countries to form South-South preferential trade agreements (SSPTAs) as a means of diversifying and expanding trade relationships in the face of this challenge. Of all the BRICS, our findings show that China poses the greatest challenge; the countries forming the most South-South agreements are those whose exports have been most displaced by China. We verify this pattern using both systemic and country-specific measures of the China “shock.” Imports from China, in contrast, have no significant effect on SSPTA formation. Our account, which helps resolve the dual puzzle of declining trade with rich countries and the proliferation of SSPTAs in recent decades, underlines the implications of China's rise on the developing world.

In a World of Value Chains: What Space for Regulatory Coherence and Cooperation in Trade Agreements?

2019 ◽  
pp. 217-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Hoekman ◽  
Charles F. Sabel
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Organization ◽  
Supply Chains ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Basic Unit ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
Global Supply Chains ◽  
Regulatory Authorities ◽  
Ex Post ◽  
Regulatory Cooperation ◽  
Trade Partners

This chapter argues that the changes that make global supply chains a basic unit of industrial organization also prompt regulatory concern with rigorous, ex post, or post-approval monitoring domestically and in the economies of trade partners. Continuing and deep sectoral cooperation among regulatory authorities is increasingly important both to establish the operational equivalence of distinct regulatory regimes and to facilitate trade by reducing the incidence of non-tariff measures (NTMs) that have become relatively more important obstacles to trade as tariffs have declined. These emerging forms of regulatory cooperation, this chapter argues further and counterintuitively, do not decrease, but rather increase possibilities for holding sovereign commitments to trade partners accountable to continuing democratic oversight.

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