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Frederick M Abbott - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • nafta and the legalization of world politics a case study
    Social Science Research Network, 2000
    Co-Authors: Frederick M Abbott
    Abstract:

    This article analyzes the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the context of a broader project examining the causes and consequences of the legalization of world politics. Governments are continuously engaged in the process of negotiating International Trade Agreements, and in each case negotiators are confronted with choices regarding the best mode of legalization to accomplish their agreed upon objectives. By closely analyzing the choices made by governments over time and correlating those choices with the results achieved (in the context of stated objectives), political scientists and lawyers may aid in directing government negotiators to preferred legalization options.The form of legalization represented in NAFTA is characteristic of a trend toward higher levels of precision, obligation, and delegation in International Trade regulation that has been ongoing since the adoption of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1947. The specific institutional and juridical framework of NAFTA reflects particularized objectives of Canadian, Mexican, and U.S. Trade negotiators, pursued under constraints imposed by their political negotiating environment. NAFTA embodies a high degree of precision and obligation and a moderate degree of delegation of decision-making authority. The legalization formula of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement is substantially similar. The charter of the European Union (EU), in contrast, embodies a high degree of obligation and delegation and a moderate level of precision. Though the negotiators of the NAFTA, WTO, and EU Agreements adopted somewhat different institutional and juridical models, they each preferred "hard" law to "soft" law. This article analyzes NAFTA and explains the preference for using hard law in International economic arrangements. It suggests that hard law reduces intergovernmental transaction costs associated with Trade and investment, reduces private risk premiums associated with Trade and investment, promotes transparency and provides corollary participation benefits, tends to restrain strategic political behaviors, and may increase the range of integration effects by encouraging private actions to enforce intergovernmental obligations.NAFTA was designed to promote market liberalization and to encourage capital flows, not to create a political union. Precise rules were adopted along with regional institutions that lack the power to adopt supplementary legislation. The Agreement manifests a high level of obligation by way of terms that import binding commitment; these terms are not offset by exceptional opt-out provisions. However, a moderate level of authority is delegated to dispute-settlement mechanisms. There was no political support for a strong regional judicial body that would significantly restrict the autonomy of the parties. The creation of such a judicial body would have raised serious constitutional issues within the parties and may have precluded the conclusion of an Agreement. The European Community (EC) treaty-the charter of the EU-employs a different legalization formula than employed by NAFTA or the WTO Agreement. Hard legalization in the EU Trade context is achieved by a relatively imprecise charter coupled with a high degree of delegation to institutions that may promulgate secondary legislation with more precise content. The objective of providing rules that more adequately address second- and third-generation Trade barriers is achieved, but only through a continuing legislative and judicial process. The EU contemplates achieving substantially broader social objectives than NAFTA or the WTOY Neither the parties to NAFTA nor the members of the WTO had the political option of establishing the high level of delegation represented in the EU institutions, and neither arrangement sought to broadly address social issues. Determining whether the legalization formula in NAFTA or in the EU is better suited to achieving its objectives is not feasible at this stage. The objectives of the arrangements are not the same, which argues against directly comparing the formulas. A counter-example to the NAFTA/WTO formula is represented by the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. APEC is characterized by low levels of precision, delegation, and obligation. I I The APEC formula was adopted in the context of historically nonlegalized cultures and by governments that had not agreed on particular objectives. APEC is not a successful model of regional economic integration. It may be viewed as a failed experiment in alternative legalization or as a transitional model serving as a predicate to harder legalization. NAFTA has so far been implemented largely in accordance with its terms, despite the period of economic turbulence generated by the Mexican peso crisis of 1994-95. The period of NAFTA implementation has witnessed substantial increases in cross border Trade among its parties and significantly heightened transborder capital flows. On their face, these developments might suggest that NAFTA has aided in achieving the economic objectives of its parties; however, the parties have maintained political policies supportive of NAFTA's objectives throughout this period. The period ofNAFTA implementation has coincided with sustained economic expansion in the United States, the dominant economic actor in the arrangement. It may plausibly be argued that the parties would have achieved the same objectives, with comparable results, without NAFTA. NAFTA has yet to face sustained circumstances in which legal norms and political policies diverge, and the durability of its legalization effects are thus relatively indeterminate.The implementation of NAFTA has yielded certain unanticipated results. The transnational(investor-to-state) investment-related dispute settlement mechanism has been invoked by private investors in circumstances that were not contemplated by NAFTA negotiators. This lends support to the postulate that transnational dispute settlement may broaden the scope of subject matter affected by an International Trade Agreement. The record of NAFTA implementation to date supports the use of hard law instruments in International economic relations.

Jun Oshiro - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • tariff policy and transport costs under reciprocal dumping
    Papers in Regional Science, 2012
    Co-Authors: Jun Oshiro
    Abstract:

    This paper analyzes tariff competition by investigating the strategic interactions among firms that are highly mobile across national boundaries. Although high transport costs yield a geographic dispersion of the industry, sufficiently low transport costs result in a core-periphery location where nobody bears tariff burdens. In any case, the world economy would be in a much better position under an International coordination scheme. An economy is only required to enforce a weak International Trade Agreement for improving global welfare. JEL classification: F12; F21; R38

  • tariff policy and transport costs under reciprocal dumping
    2011
    Co-Authors: Jun Oshiro
    Abstract:

    This paper analyzes tariff competition by investigating the strategic interactions among firms that are highly mobile across national boundaries. Although high transport costs yield a geographic dispersion of the industry, sufficiently low transport costs result in a core-periphery location where nobody bears tariff burdens. In any case, the world economy would be in a much better position under an International coordination scheme. An economy is only required to enforce a weak International Trade Agreement for improving global welfare.

Josh Ederington - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • International Coordination of Trade and Domestic Policies
    American Economic Review, 2001
    Co-Authors: Josh Ederington
    Abstract:

    The success of GATT negotiations in lowering tariff barriers worldwide has shifted attention to the use of domestic policies as a secondary Trade barrier, raising the question of how to deal with domestic policies within an International Trade Agreement. Currently, no theoretical basis exists for considering the allocation of scarce enforcement power at the International level over Trade and domestic policies within a unified Agreement. This paper provides such a framework in a model of self-enforcing International Agreements. It is shown that, when limited enforcement power prevents countries from implementing a fully efficient set of Trade and domestic policies, tariff barriers are the most efficient means of affording countries protection so as to maintain the viability of the Agreement. This result supports current GATT language which allows governments the use of tariffs but prohibits the use of domestic policies as "disguised" Trade restrictions.

Dustin Tingley - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • Trade policy economic interests and party politics in a developing country the political economy of cafta dr
    International Studies Quarterly, 2014
    Co-Authors: Raymond Hicks, Helen V Milner, Dustin Tingley
    Abstract:

    Developing countries have increasingly opened their economies to Trade. Research about Trade policy in developed countries focuses on a bottom-up process by identifying economic preferences of domestic groups. We know less about developing countries. We analyze how economic and political variables influenced Costa Rican voters in a referendum on CAFTA-DR, an International Trade Agreement. We find little support for Stolper–Samuelson models of economic preferences, but more support for specific factor models. We also isolate the effects of political parties on the referendum, controlling for many economic factors; we document how at least one party influenced voters and this made the difference for CAFTA-DR passage. Politics, namely parties using their organizational strength to cue and frame messages for voters, influenced this important Trade policy decision. Theories about Trade policy need to take into account top-down political factors along with economic interests.

Bowker Janet - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • Contesting International Trade Agreements: argumentation patterning in embedded discourses
    Coordinamento SIBA - Università del Salento, 2021
    Co-Authors: Bowker Janet
    Abstract:

    This chapter looks at the ideological positioning and argumentation patterning of three sets of interrelated data, which can be considered vertically organized in a hierarchical configuration: these sub-corpora consist of the drafts of a major International Trade Agreement, the TiSA, (Trade in Services Agreement), a series of revelations and exposures authored by WikiLeaks, and a collection of online publications produced by the campaigning group, Friends of the Earth International. The objective is to identify how a process of ‘entextualization’ is realized through the various discourses – from the normative codification of legislation, on to the detailed specialist exposition and critique from legal experts, and over to the affectively-charged discourse of resistance and protest in the public domain. The conceptual and explanatory frameworks for the analysis derive from two disciplinary fields, argumentative studies and discourse analysis, where the role of language studies in describing discursive construal has traditionally played rather different roles. The analysis of the corpus starts from a linguistic perspective, comparing and contrasting semantic profiling, topicalization, and verb usage over the three sub-corpora. Using accounts of argumentative structure and procedures – elaborating the notions of schema, frames, moves and strategies, it is possible to identify distinctive patterns of reasoning, revealed through linguistic indexicality. In this way, argumentation can be related to the three varying communicative contexts, their authorship, audiences and rhetorical purposes. This study is, therefore, an attempt to integrate the two fields of argumentation studies and discourse analysis more systematically, recognizing the mutual benefits this carries for both, providing a body of empirical evidence necessary to further theoretical models and theories of argumentation, on the one hand, while extending discourse analysis into more challenging areas of investigation and taking a wider textual perspective than has often been common to date