Assessment of China’s FTAs: Focusing on Trade Remedies, SPS and TBT Provisions

This chapter describes the legal framework that allows firms to petition the government for the imposition of tariffs on competing imports. It introduces the antidumping law as the most commonly used measure to block unfair imports. It talks about the government's definition of “dumping” as a lower price charged in the United States than in a foreign exporter's home market. The chapter also examines the case for providing domestic industries with temporary relief from imports so that they can adjust to foreign competition, including the recently revived “national security” rationale for limiting imports. It looks at countervailing duties, which address foreign subsidies and escape clause, and provide industries with temporary relief from imports without the claim of unfairness.

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Reasons, Institutions, Authorities

Exceptions in International Law ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198789321.003.0021 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 375-400

Author(s):

Oisin Suttle

Keyword(s):

World Trade Organization ◽

World Trade ◽

International Standards ◽

Service Conception ◽

The Law ◽

General Exceptions ◽

Trade Remedies ◽

Domestic Regulation

This chapter examines the logic of exceptions in World Trade Organization (WTO) law, and their relation to the reasons that apply to members, and to the authority of WTO law and adjudicators. Many exceptions can be understood as qualifying rules, in order that those rules should better track the reasons that apply to those subject to them. However, others are better explained as reflecting the limits of law’s authority: at least sometimes, exceptions identify areas wherein the law falls silent, not because its subjects necessarily have reasons to act otherwise than in accordance with the unqualified rule, but rather because they have good claims to decide for themselves whether they should so act. Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority is applied to develop an account of the grounds, scope, and limits of WTO law’s authority, which account is in turn applied to explain three specific sets of exceptions or quasi-exceptions: the GATT Article XX General Exceptions, the trade remedies rules, and the ‘non-exception-exceptions’ for domestic regulation deviating from international standards.

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