Indirect subsidization of domestic industries can occur where, for example, a financial contribution is provided to one entity but the associated benefit goes to another. This may materialize where (1) a financial contribution to an upstream producer results in a benefit to a downstream...

WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) was designed to liberalize and expand trade in government procurement. Revised GPA was implemented in 1996 and the latest revision was completed (but not yet implemented) in 2012, but as a plurilateral agreement. Since the end of the UR, there has been...

Under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), international trade has increased significantly — and tariffs have declined equally dramatically — over the past 70 years (see Figures 1 and 2). It comes as no surprise that this growth in trade has been accompanied by...

Official reports and case studies reveal that China experienced different means of communication with the world powers since it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. In the first five years, China had public communication with both the United States and the European Union under the...

Trade regulation may never have been in more flux than it is now. Other than the emergence of ‘megaregionals' (such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership-TTIP or the Trans-pacific Partnership-TPP) and the difficulties in finalizing the Doha Development Agenda, increased...

As tariff barriers, of traditional and typical policy instruments in international trade, have been reduced significantly under preferential trade agreements as well as the multilateral trading system, non-tariff measures (NTMs), especially those of technical barriers to trade (TBT), become more...

The Agreement on Trade Facilitation (TFA) embodies the first set of new multilateral rules to have been negotiated under auspices of the WTO since the launch of the Doha Development Agenda, part of a small package of decisions centering on matters of interest to developing countries that was...

This contribution seeks to analyse and compare WTO Accession Protocols, particularly the interpretations given relevant commitments made in them regarding energy and fossil fuels. After first providing an outline of the accession process and its importance for the natural resources and energy...

Transnational technical standard-setting has grown in prominence in recent years. The World Trade Organization (WTO) requires the use of international standards but adopts a deferential approach towards international standards. However, practice shows that several international standards are...

Dual pricing is a practice through which resource-endowed states sell their energy resources at significantly lower prices on the domestic market, as compared to the price on the export market. Dual pricing could be considered an environmentally harmful fossil fuel subsidy: States that maintain...