This chapter examines the thesis that regulatory policies treated in regional trade agreements have an inherently WTO multilateral character, as they are designed and applied on a most-favoured nation (MFN) basis. It surveys general transparency and dispute settlement provisions and selected WTO...

With the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, the pyramidal design of the international trading system placed multilateralism at the top of the pyramid, regionalism/bilateralism in the middle, and the domestic trade and economic policies of WTO Member States at the bottom of...

The Doha Declaration on the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and Public Health is a strong political statement, which further confirms the interpretative value of TRIPS. According to Paragraph 4 of the Doha Declaration, Members can...

This paper examines the impact of the Free Trade Agreement between Mexico and the European Union (MEUFTA) on trade flows between Mexico and the EU and between Mexico and its NAFTA partners. It also considers the economic and political context in which the MEUFTA was negotiated and some of the...

This paper examines the legal status of a treaty after the termination of diplomatic relations between two countries by using Taiwan-Panama FTA as a case study. This paper argues that the severance of diplomatic relations does not affect the legal relations of Taiwan-related FTAs. This paper...

Regional economic integration is back in vogue following the "stumble" in the Doha Round in July 2008. Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) are driving this trend in Asia and the Pacific as well as in Central and South America, and the sheer volume of PTAs is striking. In the 1990s there were...

Trade in services can take many forms (or ‘modes'), such as cross-border delivery, or delivery by a commercial presence in a foreign country. Unlike tariffs or quantitative restrictions on goods, which are imposed at the border, barriers to trade in services are more commonly found ‘behind...