No More Strategical Neutrality on Technological Neutrality: Technological Neutrality as a Bridge Between the Analogue Trading Regime and Digital Trade

The World Trade Organization (WTO), a unique multilateral trading regime, has failed to establish its relevance to the digital nature of trade. This article revisits the ‘principle of technological neutrality’ to make the cross-border supply of services by electronic means subject to the current rules-based trading regime. I argue that the principle of technological neutrality could help resolve a number of thorny legal issues: confirming the applicability of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) rules to the delivery of services by electronic means; providing a guideline to determine the likeness of services in the era of digital trade; and backing up an evolutionary approach to interpreting the GATS schedules of commitments. However, the WTO adjudicatory bodies have been reluctant to rely on the principle of technological neutrality, which is referred to as strategic neutrality in this article. This article urges the WTO adjudicatory bodies to abandon their strategically neutral position on technological neutrality immediately. It also explores ways to incorporate the principle of technological neutrality into the world trading system at the bilateral, plurilateral, and multilateral levels.

Unregulated Algorithmic Trading: Testing the Boundaries of the European Union Algorithmic Trading Regime

Trading in modern equity markets has come to be dominated by machines and algorithms. However, there is significant concern over the impact of algorithmic trading on market quality and a number of jurisdictions have moved to address the risks associated with this new type of trading. The European Union has been no exception to this trend. This article argues that while the European Union algorithmic trading regime is often perceived as a tough response to the challenges inherent in machine trading, it has one crucial shortcoming: it does not regulate the simpler, basic execution algorithms used in automated order routers. Yet the same risk generally associated with algorithmic trading activity also arises, in particular, from the use of these basic execution algorithms—as was made evident by the trading glitch that led to the fall of United States securities trader Knight Capital in 2012. Indeed, such risk could even be amplified by the lack of sophistication of these simpler execution algorithms. It is thus proposed that the European Union should amend the objective scope of its algorithmic trading regime by expanding the definition of algorithmic trading under the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) to include all execution algorithms, regardless of their complexity.

Defending the Rule-based Trading Regime: The Multilateral Trading System at Risk and Required Responses

The current trade turmoil is not limited to negative economic effects stemming from the series of recent trade measures erected by the United States as part of the escalating U.S.–China trade war. The more serious issue that will unfold in the middle to long term is the potential collapse of the rule-based trading regime. The weakening of the multilateral trading system centered by the World Trade Organization (WTO) seems to continue. East Asia has been one of the largest beneficiaries of the rule-based trading regime in its course of extending and deepening international production networks and must now take proactive moves to defend and preserve this stable economic environment. Two crucial tasks in the preservation of the WTO are efforts to maintain the functionality of the dispute settlement mechanism and the revival of the WTO as a forum for future trade negotiations. At the same time, East Asia must develop a network of mega–free trade agreements (FTAs) to partially supplement a possible loss of the multilateral framework.

Exploitation in International Trade

It is only in recent years that philosophers of global justice have given direct and sustained attention to the subject of international trade. An important line of division in this small but growing body of work lies between accounts of justice in trade that focus on the idea of exploitation and accounts that do not. The aim of this chapter is to critically examine this debate, in order to get clearer on the nature and role of exploitation in the morality of international trade. Helena de Bres argues that, although concerns of exploitation are well founded and urgent in this domain, any account of justice in trade that centers on those concerns will be problematic. Our duties in relation to the international trading regime are better framed in terms of broader and deeper injustices that are not, fundamentally, a matter of unfair advantage-taking.

Animosities will deepen Japan-South Korea trade spat

Significance A lengthy meeting on July 12 failed to resolve the dispute. Tokyo may activate a much wider range of export restrictions later this month, when Seoul will also bring a complaint to the WTO. Impacts The Trump administration, seemingly unconcerned so far, may now be about to attempt mediation, which would improve the outlook. Pyongyang and Beijing are the greatest beneficiaries of the row. Adopting the Trump playbook undermines Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s professed stance as defender of a liberal global trading regime.