DR. RAM MANOHAR LOHIYA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY, LUCKNOW

SEMINAR PAPER-INTERNATIONAL DISPUTE RESOLUTION BODIESTopic-The WTO Regime & Developing Countries: Emerging Implications & Road Ahead

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:

Ms.Kirti Singh Abhisht hela

Faculty of law Roll No. 50 Section-A

Semester-X

The WTO Regime & Developing Countries: Emerging Implications & Road AheadThe real challenge of our age comes in form of growing economic disparity between developed and industrialized nations of the world. The difficulty faced by the WTO is how to do a better job of integrating developing countries and their specific concerned into its work. The present paper attempts to trace the role played by WTO in trade liberalization in developed and developing countries. By focusing on the special and differential treatment provisions for developing countries, the paper presents a political and economical power analysis of how developing countries stance at the WTO has evolved over time and their need for a lead towards the international trade regime. The author explores the Indian stance at WTO and its shifting coordinates in matters pertaining to issues like Intellectual Property Rights. The paper concludes that developing countries heightened profile at the WTO at the present juncture, along with its economic success and material capability, presents an unprecedented opportunity to use the platform of WTO for its development and play a constructive leadership role to construct better economic environment and Trade relations.

INTRODUCTION

In the space of more than 60 years, GATT has fostered international trading so intensively as to raise problems of world governance that will become even more pressing in the future. These problems concern the impact of international trade on social cohesion, the environment, corruption or even the role of the state in WTO member countries. While these problems have little to do with the establishment of a world government, thus, willy-nilly and despite having inherited GATTs penchant for pragmatism, the WTO finds itself at the heart of these issues of world governance for one simple reason, which is that as the century draws to a close the WTO is the universal economic institution par excellence. It would be to forget that GATT, while suffering from disadvantages in many respects, did have one great advantage in that it benefited from the attraction exerted by liberalization, both morally and in terms of economic dynamism, following two world conflagrations triggered by states that had no qualms about sacrificing their people to war. And yet it is hard to imagine two more different personalities than GATT, forceps-delivered and discreet-living, slowly building up its modest successes, and the WTO, born beneath the multi-colored salvoes of the Moroccan fantasia, quick to scoop up some major successes, and a media darling with its mixture of soap operas and boxing matches involving goodies and baddies.

Equality of states entails the power to choose partners, and to discriminate against others. There are hardly any limitations in customary law on engaging in preferential or discriminatory treatment, beyond the principles and rules enshrined in the charter of the United Nations. There is no general obligation to treat all states alike. Neither equal treatment nor most favoured nation (MFN) status is considered to be principles of general public international law. Norms are relating to jus cogens hardly affect trade relations, except for the prohibition of slavery in its different forms, and of policies supporting racial segregation. The principle of pacta tertiis nec nocent nec prosunt is of equally limited effect. Short of specific treaty provisions, it certainly does not limit the conclusion of preferential and discriminatory trade agreements, having the distorting effects of trade diversion.

The principles and rules pertaining to regional integration and preferential trade agreements of the WTO, which bonds its members, are therefore of paramount importance in light of the increasing number and complexity of preferential agreements. They shape the conditions, requirements and limitations for such agreements on the basis of GATT.

BRIEF INSIGHT ABOUT INTERNATIONAL TRADE LAW

International trade can be described as the sale of goods with an international element. This element could be present due to the fact that the seller and buyer are established in different countries, or that the goods have to be transported from one country to another, or that the parties have chosen a jurisdiction and/or law different from their domestic one. Some pieces of legislation provide their own definitions, that the parties having their place of business in different countries.

Due to the international character of the contract, the seller and buyer bear additional risks to those incurred in domestic sales, such as following:

(A) PHYSICAL RISKS

Physical risks can arise due to the transportation of goods, which may be over a huge distance and conducted by various means such as ships, planes, trains or lorries. The goods will be exposed to the risks inherent in the form of transportation, and for a substantial amount of time may be totally out of the Sellerss and/or buyers control. Carriage and insurance arrangements therefore become of high importance.

(B) FINANCIAL RISKS

Financial risks abound regarding exchange rate fluctuations and payment systems across more than one country. Most likely the contracting parties have no knowledge of each others integrity, solvency and creditworthiness. Thus, neither will the seller want to dispatch the goods without the buyer providing some sort of security for payment, nor will the buyer want to pay the price before he has some kind of legal right over the goods.

(C) LEGAL RISKS

The parties may be confronted with foreign jurisdictions and/or laws, or they may have to enforce a judgment or an arbitral award in a foreign country. In cases of Cross-border dealings the parties would therefore be well advised to include choice of law and jurisdiction clauses into their contract terms.

(D) POLITICAL RISKS

Political risks could amount to such serious situations as wars, embargoes and blockades. If trading in a politically unstable area, it might be beneficial for the parties to take out extra insurance in addition to the ordinary marine policy.

Therefore, the parties to an international sales transaction should therefore carefully plan their transactions. Many of the risks can be minimized by taking out appropriate insurance, or by contracting ion carefully selected terms. Useful trade terms have been developed largely by trade customs and assimilated into English law. The International Chamber for Commerce, for example, has developed the Incoterms, which are widely recognized. Some trade associations have their own standard contract forms, which are tailored to the particular needs of their trade and are well tested, some of which even provide for a specific dispute resolution mechanism.

To summarize, international sales law and the rules relating to the transport of such goods are found in a variety of sources:

(a) international conventions

(b) statutes

(c) common law

(d) trade terms and customs

(e) Contract terms.

EXPLORING THE TERM DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

According to the United Nations definition, there is no established convention for the designation of developed and developing countries or areas. In common practice, Japan in Asia, Canada and the United States in North America, Australia and New Zealand in Oceania, and Western Europe are considered developed regions or areas. In international trade statistics, the Southern African Customs Union is also treated as a developed region [citation needed] and Israel as a developed country; and countries of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.) countries in Europe are not included under either developed or developing regions.

Nowadays the more comprehensive group of developed countries also covers the East Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan). Hong Kong has long been considered developed by the IMF which grants the formal classification of developed countries. Although Hong Kong was handed over to the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), which is a developing country, it is still considered internationally as separate economic entities (as it has its own currencies the Hong Kong Dollar) and a separate political system according to the Basic Law of Hong Kong. Due to the difference between its economy and that the mainland China, its territory retain its own border and custom controls.

THE ROLE AND ATTITUDE OF WTO IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

The term developed country, or advanced country, is used to categorize countries with developed economies in which the tertiary and quaternary sectors of industry dominate. This level of economic development usually translates into a high income per capita and a high Human Development Index (HDI). Countries with high gross domestic product (GDP) per capita often fit the above description of a developed economy. However, anomalies exist when determining developed status by the factor GDP per capita alone.

Modern terms synonymous with the term developed/advanced country include industrialized countries; more developed countries (MDC) and more economically developed countries (MEDC). The term-industrialized country may be ambiguous, as industrialization is an ongoing process that is hard to define. The term MEDC does modern geographers to use one specifically developed. The first industrialized country was England, followed by Germany, France, the remained of the United Kingdom and other Western European countries. According to economists such as Jeffrey Sachs, however, the current divide between the developed and developing world is largely a phenomenon of the 20th century, noting that until the post World War II era most persons in all societies were impoverished.

(A) THE ROLE OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES IN RESTORING THE OPEN TRADING SYSTEM

Developing countries can make a contribution to a restoration of the open trading system. There indeed many reasons why they should now be prepared to make such an effort:

It is no longer possible to ask only for derogations from GATT principles in their favor, in the expectation that the basic framework of liberal trade will be unaffected.

Developing countries are the newcomers and therefore depend most on a liberal trading system that accommodates their growth.

Developing countries have shown themselves well able to expand manufactured exports, now equal in value to their primary commodity exports (excluding fuel), provided their own trade policies do not tax these exports excessively and there exists reasonably unrestricted market access. Automatic accommodation to their growth is, therefore, their greatest interest in trade negotiations.

It has proved unnecessary indeed costly for them to enjoy limitless freedom to follow import substitution policies.

The colonial period is now slipping into the past and should no longer be allowed to dominate attitudes.

Finally, even if a special status were desirable in itself, it can be achieved only at the price of victimization of the successful. There is little likelihood that industrial countries will grant special privileges to some countries without also victimizing others (or even the same countries in different circumstances).

As Harry Johnson once wrote, One of the few genuine issues, and the one most subject to obfuscation, is purely and simply that of allowing the developing countries to sell freely what they are good at making.

(B) NEED FOR A LEAD BY DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

What is needed is that the developing countries, or as large a group of them as possible, affirm their belief in the value of the open trading system and show their willingness to abide by its disciplines. This would involve a commitment to replace quantitative restrictions by tariffs and to liberalize tariffs to a substantial extent over a specified period of time, willingness to abide by GATT articles and codes in essentially the same was as industrial countries, an insistence on the applicability of unconditional nondiscrimination in all countries trade policies, and to willingness to engage in north-south negotiations over such a restoration and over complementary liberalization of industrial countries barriers against them.

The recommended path does not depend on any precisely formulated notion of reciprocity, over which a fruitful discussion of present difficulties can only founder. What is demanded is the sort of commitment that can change the context in which discussions occur, thus breaking the logjam created by present mistrust of past errors?

In sum, developing countries have the opportunity to make a commitment that is likely simultaneously to improve the efficiency of their own trade regimes, increase trading opportunities for the whole world as they open their markets, enhance the legitimacy of the liberal trading system in industrial countries, and, one hopes, and reduce the barriers of industrial countries against them. That opportunity should be seized.

THE SPECIAL DIFFERENTIAL TREATMENT OF WTO TOWARDS DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

The eminent trade scholar John Jackson has distinguished between rule-oriented and power-oriented regimes, suggesting that the GATT/WTO system has moved towards a rule-oriented system. While this is no doubt true, power remains an important element in terms of members participation in the system. This presents the picture of how power considerations affect developing countries role in the current system.

The WTOs primary purpose is to allow members to bargain with each other in order to obtain binding commitments to change policies that adversely affect the welfare of other member countries. This bargaining is inherently power-based. WTO members negotiate market access commitments, for example, based on the size and diversity of their economies. Members with the greatest economic wealth and most diversified economies, such as the United States and the EC, have more to offer in negotiations and less to lose in the events that negotiations break down. Thus, they have more bargaining power than other members. At the other end of the spectrum, members with little wealth and diversity in their economies have the least to offer in any given negotiation and the most to lose if the negotiations are unsuccessful.

Over the years the GATT/WTO system has become increasingly subject to legal, rather than political, control. As members have taken on new commitments, the power of the wealthy countries has been decreased, and some commitments have been directly aimed at reducing the use of unilateral power by the wealthy countries. Moreover, the new dispute resolution architecture allows each member to hold other members accountable for their commitments; this form of legalization has replaced the negotiated settlement disputes (which is inherently power-based) with the level playing field of judicial review.

We should not, however, jump too quickly to the conclusion that in todays regime the relative power of countries is unimportant. Clearly, as WTO members undertake negotiations to work out the implementation of GATS Agreement or in the new Doha Round of multilateral negotiations, in these negotiations, the relative power of the members continues to shape the negotiations, both in process and in outcome. If nothing else, the search for ways to put together bargaining coalitions, and the counter-efforts to break up coalitions, shows that power remains the central ingredient of lawmaking by negotiation. Moreover, despite these efforts, the WTO system has proven to be ineffective at eliminating the resort to unilateral power when powerful countries want to impose new obligations on others. Therefore it has proven difficult to address the power imbalance between developed and developing countries even within the WTOs current law-based system.

Whatever the reality now, over the last six decades developing countries have had a healthy distrust of the GATT/WTO regime and have maintained skepticism about the value of the WTO to their own interests. The GATT/WTO regime is simultaneously strong and fragile. Its long run stability depends on insuring that all members continue to believe that the benefits of belonging to the WTO outweigh the costs.

Historically, the primary issue between developed and developing countries has been whether the principles that governed GATT was to be one of formal equality or real equality-recognizing that formal equality between countries that are unequal is not equality. The developing countries had no interest in participating in a system that did not acknowledge the special position of poor countries and the insistence of the United States that poor countries make the same sort of concessions as wealthy countries and accept the same sort of obligations made membership unattractive.

Ultimately, the WTO implemented the concept of special and differential treatment- the notion that within the GATT/WTO system, poor countries would be given treatment that reflected their poverty, and thus their relative lack of bargaining power.

In the absence of any official authorization, preferences given under the GSP programme to developing, but not developed, countries would have violated the prohibition on discriminatory treatment contained in the cornerstone most favoured nation (MFN). Accordingly, the members created the necessary exception to the MFN requirements to allow such preferences by way of a waiver of Article 1.

In sum, the GSP system was instituted in the hope that developing countries could use the trade preferences to increase their national wealth and thereby increase their interest in, and allegiance to, the GATT/WTO regime. The underlying theory was that the preferences would hasten the economic development of less developed countries and would increase the power that these countries would derive from their own economic strength. This, in turn, would help to restore and maintain balance within the system. In this way, the preferences can be seen as a reflection of, and reaction to, the economic and political situation in the recipient countries. Nonetheless, the GSP system has unique characteristics that make it an imperfect tool for achieving that goal.

(A) SHIFTING COORDINATES OF INDIAS STANCE AT THE WTOIndia remained a virtually closed economy for nearly four decades after its independence in 1947.The notion of self-reliance played a major role in defining the norm of development in India. India has been one of the initial signatories to the GATT 1947, which was formed post World War II. India in-principle was supposed to have accepted the mandate, but it remained firm on its trade and development policies aimed at self-reliance and import substitution.

From the mid 1980s, a technological view of development started gaining momentum in Indias development policy. It requires opening up the doors to latest technological development on the global frontier, quite a departure from its earlier protectionist policy regime. This, in a sense, marked the beginning of Indias policy of liberalization.

The Uruguay Round of the GATT negotiations began in 1986, precisely when Indias development policy making process was at a watershed and it paving the path towards Marrakesh in 1994 and the establishment of the WTO. Developed countries tried to use the Singapore (1996) platform to broaden the agenda of WTO to areas popularly known as the Singapore Issues, namely, Investment, Competition Policy, Transparency in Government Procurement and also wanted to introduce core labour issues in the negotiations. Developing countries including India objected to such designs, arguing that the Singapore Issues were essentially non trade issues and for negotiating labour standards, ILO should be the right platform and not the WTO. But Geneva (1998) and Seattle (1999) proved to be yet another failed attempt by the developed world to promote an expansionary agenda within the WTO, incorporating labour standards and issues of coherence in global economic architecture (the Singapore Issues).

At the end, India was quite happy with the Doha Agreement in 2003. In fact, it was post-Doha that India emerged as a leading and key negotiating partner at the WTO and assumed the role of a pro-active player in the whole process. There was a clear shift from its earlier position of cautious, or at best passive, participation.

(B) IN RESPECT TO INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS (IPR)

Indias position on making IPR a standard for the Global Trading System has seen a sea change. Indias shifting stance on IPR at the GATT/WTO spanning over entire period of the Uruguay and the Doha rounds (1986 till date) has drawn a lot of attention in contemporary analysis.

At the Uruguay Round, developed nations (the US, in particular), under pressure from their pharmaceutical corporate lobby, proposed to introduce a uniformly strong IPR regime on all nations as part of a multilateral trading agreement through the TRIPS agreement. This was in spite of the fact that a strong IPR goes against the core philosophy of the WTOs principle of promoting competition and free trade. Ironically, there is historical evidence to suggest that the developed world has had the flexibility to adopt an appropriate IPR regime during their process of development and technological learning.

India, beginning in the 1970s and well into the 1980s, was going through a phase of know-why oriented technological learning. It was building up process development capabilities through reverse engineering both infringing process for off-patent items and non-infringing processes for patented ones. This was possible because of its 1970 patent act which allowed only process (and not product patents) on chemical substances. Switching over to strong product patent regime at that point would have put a pre-mature halt to this technological capability building process.

A clear shift in Indias attitude was visible post-1989. It was a merely strategic move for India to adopt this changing stance towards TRIPS in 1989, as a tool for extracting concessions in other aspects of WTO negotiations. Having signed the TRIPS agreement in 1994, India was mandated to change its patent regime by 2005. The domestic pressure was now enormous. Concerns were expressed about the potential increase in drug prices and its adverse effects on access to medicine and public health in India. At Doha, India along with other developing countries notably Brazil and South Africa (constituting the IBSA group), pushed for an explicit acknowledgement of the primacy of the member countries rights to protect public health and promote access to affordable medicines.

Two other IPR related issues were raised by India at Doha. First, it wanted to extend protection under geographical indication (GI) beyond wine and spirit, to other products. Second, it demanded restrictions on misappropriation of biological and genetic resources and traditional knowledge (TK).

Presently it has focused on three prime concerns technology transfer, biodiversity and geographical indications. India proposed harmonisation of TRIPS agreement with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and suggested that TRIPS should conform to CBD rather than the other way round. The fault line between the two approaches i.e. CBD and TRIPS, is that CBD considers intellectual property protection as a means to achieving the end of sustainable development, while Agreement on TRIPS considers IPRs as an end in itself.

(C) WTOS HELPING HAND TOWARDS DEVELOPING COUNTRIES!!!The WTO system of principles, rules and obligations safeguards the interests of all members- including the economically least powerful- and they help governments to devise and pursue economic reform programmes..

1. A rules-based system: The WTO system combines reciprocal market access and negotiation of market access with rules on non-discrimination in trade the Most favoured Nation (MFN) principle. That is, market liberalization agreed between any two WTO members is extended to all members of the WTO.

2. Supports domestic reform programmes: the framework of rules and principles in the WTO helps to clarify the full impact of a trade policy decision, offering guidance and support for governments that choose to resist protectionist pressures in the interests of sustainable development.

3. Some preferential treatment: most developing countries have relied, from time to time, on special preferential access to developed country markets under the generalized system of Preferences (GSP). These non-reciprocal trade preferences sometimes offered developing countries substantially better access to developed country markets than was available under bound MFN tariff rates.

4. Flexibility for developing countries: the WTO recognizes that developing countries may need more time to implement new obligations such as those adopted in Uruguay Round. The guide contains a special section detailing the additional flexibility built in to the WTO agreements in recognition of the interests of developing countries members.

5. Rules covering service trade: the (GATS) extends the rule-based multilateral trading system to the large and dynamic sector of service trade. The benefits for developing countries should be similar to those they have enjoyed from WTO rules on merchandise trade.

6. Intellectual Property Rules: the Agreement of Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) offers potential benefits for developing countries by creating a policy framework that could help promote technology transfer and foreign direct investment. Its main disciplines include non-discrimination (MFN and national treatment) and the equal application by all members of minimum standards of protection for all categories of intellectual property rights.7. Textile and food trade: In textile and clothing trade, the phase-out of the quantitative import barriers sanctioned by the Multi-Fiber Arrangement-leaving only tariff protection for domestic markets-represents a fundamental change in protection policy. Developing countries are expected, eventually, to be the biggest beneficiaries of changes in trade flows, investment and the location of production that will result

(D) ARE THE WTOS GOALS APPROPRIATE FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES?

One of the purposes of WTO rules is to promote trade liberalization, that is, the elimination or reduction of barriers to trade. With regard to whether a policy of trade liberalization is right for developing countries, there is even greater opposition.

One argument that is made against the idea of having developing countries liberalize is that todays developed countries reached their current status not through open trade policies, but rather through protecting their domestic markets. Evaluating this claim is difficult, because it is hard to prove cause and effect. It is true that many of todays rich countries achieved industrialization at a time when their markets for some products were heavily protected. But was that the cause of the industrialization? Or would they have done even better without protectionist policies? Assessing what would have occurred in the counterfactual situation is a difficult task. Furthermore, the world was a difficult place during prior industrialization periods. What may have made sense then, in a time of limited capital flows and foreign investment, may not be appropriate today.

A related claim is the idea that the trade liberalization policies pushed by rich countries today are a form of neo-colonialism. Some people take the view that rich countries promote this liberalization so that their companies can take control of the economic resources of the poor countries. In a limited sense, this claim is probably true. Governments of rich countries are looking out for the interests of the domestic companies. However, focusing on the motivation in isolation is probably not a fair assessment of the policy. In pushing for trade liberalization, policy makers in rich countries also have the interests of their own consumers in mind, as well as the general economic welfare of the world as a whole.

It is also important to note that any claims of harm to developing countries by trade liberalization may be a bit exaggerated. The reality is that developing countries have not made extensive commitments to liberalize and they benefit from numerous exceptions to the rules. Moreover, few complaints are brought against them under the WTOs dispute settlement process. Thus, the whole debate about the effect of trade liberalization on developing countries is somewhat theoretical. Much of the concern is really about what might occur if liberalization were to progress considerably as opposed to what is actually happening now.

SIX DECADES OF MULTILATERAL TRADE COOPERATION: LESSONS FROM THE PAST FOR FUTURE STRATEGIES

Five major lessons for successful global trade management emerge from the past sixty years of the GATT/WTO system. They need to be applied to the present situation to set the stage for another half century of successful multilateral trade cooperation.

(1) The Bicycle must keep moving: forward momentum is essential to avoid backsliding into protectionism and mercantilism. A major new initiative is sorely needed at the present time to restart the bicycle.

(2) Big is Beautiful: large scale initiatives work better than small ones in keeping the bicycle moving.

(3) Building Blocks, Not Stumbling Blocks Regional trade arrangements have been a major source of liberalization momentum throughout the post war period, especially over the past decade, but also pose potential risks to the global system. Hence, they provide both the foundation for the next big multilateral initiative and another motivation to launch it.

(4) Money is Central. The international monetary and macroeconomic environment has been a critical determinant of the launch of all three major postwar trade rounds.

(5) Leadership is Essential. The United States has galvanized each of the previous rounds but the European Union has been an essential partner in de facto G-2 management of the system.

CONCLUSION

The problem of our age is growing economic disparity between developed and industrialized country and this lead to the establishment of WTO for balanced trade and investments. The Trade liberalization within a framework of internationally agreed rules benefits developed and developing countries alike, and the WTO has called for special attention to developing countries to increase trade and investment and also set a Special and Differential Treatment Provisions (S&D) for Developing Countries.

Due to the failure of the trade of less developed countries to develop as rapidly as that of industrialized countries there is a tendency for international standards to be driven by developed country benchmarks and political agendas, taking little account of differences in national circumstances and capacities in the developing world. WTO Members grant immediate and unconditional MFN treatment to the products of other Members with respect to tariffs and other trade-related measures. Programs such as the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), under which developed countries grant preferential tariff rates to developing country products, are facially inconsistent with this obligation because they accord goods of some countries more favorable tariff treatment than that accorded to goods of other WTO Members. Because such programs have been viewed as trade-expanding, however, Contracting Parties to the GATT provided a legal basis for one-way tariff preferences and certain other preferential arrangements in a 1979 decision known as the Enabling Clause. In 2004, the WTO Appellate Body ruled that the Clause allows developed countries to offer different treatment to developing countries in a GSP program, but only if identical treatment is available to all similarly situated GSP beneficiaries.

There is clearly a large overlap between Indias domestic interests and the larger interests of the developing world. Indias developmental concerns at the WTO, especially with respect to food security, livelihood and public health have, therefore, nicely championed the cause of the developing world, although much of it India has adopted for its own domestic priorities. Nevertheless, there is evidence to suggest that Indias stance at the WTO has not always been driven by narrow domestic priorities. Thus, it would perhaps adopt a balanced approach towards its negotiating stance without compromising on its firm commitment to global developmental issues.

Presently, developing countries are in much more comfortable economic position, enjoying unprecedented growth rates and economic prosperity at the macro level, they can aim at a grand foreign policy design to promote a fair and equitable world order and their heightened profile at the WTO provides a golden opportunity to capitalise on the platform of WTO negotiations as a major foreign policy instrument to play a competent leadership role for the developing world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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A treaty must neither benefit nor impair a third party.

The WTO principles and rules pertain to treaty law; from a functional point of view, they assume the role of overriding, constitutional disciplines which structure the shape and contents of preferential agreements-all with a view to supporting trade creation, as building blocks to trade regulation and liberalization, while at the same time avoiding unnecessary trade distortions and diversions. The question arises of whether these WTO disciplines provide sufficient guidance and force to bring about the desired effects.

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade1994 and the General Agreement on trade in services (GATS)

The United Nations convention on contracts for the international sale of goods 1980 and the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977.

Such as the Institute War Clauses developed by the Institute of London Underwriters or the Institute Strike Clauses.

International Commercial Terms which are International rules for the interpretation of the trade terms.

Refer to the GATT ministerial meeting of November 1982 where it was impossible to agree on more than to make determined efforts to ensure that trade policies and measures are consistent with GATT principles and rules and to resist protectionist pressures. No more compelling witness to the fragility of the system could be supplied.

Panagariya, A. (2002b), Developing Countries at WTO: A Political Economy Analysis, World Economy, 25(9), September 2002, pp. 1205-33

Bown, Chad & Hoekman, B, WTO dispute settlement and the missing developing country cases engaging the private sector. Paper (May 2005) published in the Journal of International Economic Law.

Pal, P. (2005), Current WTO Negotiations on Implications for India, ICRIER Working Paper, No.177, December.

Doha WTO Ministerial 2001: Ministerial Declaration, WT/MIN(01)/DEC/1, 20 November 2001,

WTO, Geneva. HYPERLINK "http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/min01_e/mindecl_e.htm"http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/min01_e/mindecl_e.htm

Busch, Marc & Reinhardt, Eric, Developing countries and GATT/WTO dispute settlement. The Journal of World Trade, 2003.

Meagher, Niall, Representing developing countries in WTO Paper presented at Columbia Law School seminar in 2005.

Nordstrm, Hkan, Participation of developing countries in the WTO new evidence... Paper presented at Columbia Law School seminar in 2005.

Bermeo, S & Davis, C, Who files? developing country participation in WTO adjudication.

This means that the powerless must continue to feel that they are better off within the organization than outside of it, Panagariya, A. (2002b), Developing Countries at Doha: A Political Economy Analysis, World Economy, 25(9), September 2002, pp. 1205-33

Despite the differences between developed and developing countries.

Although the initial U.S position on this question was that formal equality should be the rule, eventually the United States had to view that if it wanted the GATT/WTO system to be attractive to all countries it would have to bend toward real equality.

Shaffer, Gregory, The challenges of WTO law strategies for developing country adaptation. The World Trade Review, July 2006.

Two types of special treatment developed. From the standpoint of avoiding obligations, commitments made by developed countries would be implemented more slowly, or less severely, for developing countries, and developing countries would not have to make the same concessions as industrial country members. From the standpoint of receiving special privileges, the industrial and developing countries negotiated the GSP programme. Under this programme, developed countries were allowed and encouraged to give preferential market access to the developing countries by lowering tariffs for developing countries below the level of tariffs for developed countries; Panagariya, A. (2005), Special differential treatment in WTO, Foreign Affairs, Special Issue Free Trade?, December.

Article 1 of GATT.

1971 GSP decision, and later by way of a 1979 decision that became known as the 1979 enabling clause. The Enabling Clause continues to provide the legal basis for the MFN exception allowing countries to give the preferences, thus serving as the instrument that determines whether preference programs are lawful.

WTO International trade statistics,

.

Marjit, S.; Acharyya, R. 2003. International trade, wage inequality and the developing economy (Heidelberg, Physica).

Ray, A.S. (2006) Indias Economic Reforms: Opportunities, Challenges and Political Economy Perspectives, in Lyal White (eds) Is there an Economic Orthodoxy? Growth and Reform in Africa, Asia and Latin America, Johannesburg: South African Institute of International Affairs.

Ibid

,

Ibid

Assessed at

Panagariya (2002a), Developing Countries at Doha: A Political Economy Analysis, World Economy, 25(9), September 2002, pp. 1205-33.

They wanted to enjoy their patent monopolies across countries by enforcing uniform IPR protection globally through the WTO.

. Moreover, there is now a large body of theoretical and empirical literature, firmly establishing that IPR regime must be endogenously determined within the economy, depending on the technological learning and capability levels of the country in question; Machlup (1958), An Economic Review of the Patent System, Study of the Sub Committee on Patents, Trademarks and Copyrights of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, US Govt Printing Press: Washington DC; discusses how the free-trade movement of the 19th century strongly opposed patents.

Countries like Switzerland, Germany, Japan and Italy did not adopt a strong product for a long time; Ray and Bhaduri (2008)

Indias Health Care, in Amiya Bagchi and Krishna Soman (eds) Maladies; The Indian pharmaceutical industry lobby, which was experiencing a phenomenal growth and development based on its process development capabilities (often referred to as the process revolution), was extremely apprehensive about the TRIPS agreement. Indias strong opposition to TRIPS in the initial years of the Uruguay Round appears to be natural and justified. Ray (2005); The Indian Pharmaceutical Industry at Crossroads: Implications for Indias Health Care, in Amiya Bagchi and Krishna Soman (eds) Maladies, The Indian Pharmaceutical Industry at Crossroads: Implications for Preventives and Curatives: Debates in Public Health in India, New Delhi: Tulika Books

Ramanna (2002) Indias Patent Policy and Negotiations in TRIPS: Future options for India and other Developing Countries, Paper presented in the National Conference on TRIPS - Next Agenda for Developing Countries, Shyamprasad Institute for Social Service, Hyderabad, October 11-12 HYPERLINK "http://www.iprsonline.org/ictsd/docs/ResourcesTRIPSanita_ramanna.doc"www.iprsonline.org/ictsd/docs/ResourcesTRIPSanita_ramanna.doc, last visited on 7th December 2009.

While the pressure from the industrial lobby was getting weaker and milder compared to what it was in the 1980s, the opposition from the civil society lobby against TRIPS was gaining momentum. This did have an influence on Indias position on IPR yet again

The declaration recognizes members right to grant compulsory licenses and the freedom to determine the grounds upon which such licenses are granted. Moreover it grants each member the right to determine what constitutes a national emergency or other circumstances of extreme urgency in implementing TRIPS.

The entire episode of the artificial development of rice variety similar to the Indian Basmati rice by the US agro-company Ricetec was under scanner.

Panagariya (2002a) Developing Countries at Doha: A Political Economy Analysis, World Economy, 25(9), September 2002, pp. 1205-33

Goldberg, P.K.; Pavcnik, N. 2007. Distributional effects of globalization in developing countries, in Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 45, No. 1, pp. 3982.

For developing countries, one of the most recent achievements of the WTO has been the strengthening of this multilateral framework of rules and agreements and their extension into new areas. WTO rules have been tightened on the use of measures that often target the exports of developing countries, including those on: subsidies, countervailing and anti dumping duties and safeguard measures; Agnor, P.R.; Aizenman, J. 1999. Macroeconomic adjustment with segmented labour markets, in Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 58, pp. 277-296.

But the preferences- which were not bound because they were granted unilaterally- were not secure rights and were, in any case, eroded over time as MFN tariff rates were reduced. Offers by developing countries in the Uruguay Round to bind their tariffs have secured for them improved MFN terms of market access on a contractual- and therefore enforceable and predictable- basis; Bacchetta, M.; Jansen, M. 2003. Adjusting to trade liberalization - The role of policy, institutions and WTO disciplines, WTO Special Studies (Geneva).

Gupta, M.R. 1997. Informal sector and informal capital market in a small open less-developed economy, in Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 52, No. 2, pp. 409-428.

International Labour Office; World Trade Organization 2007. Trade and employment. Challenges for policy research (Geneva).

The new rules have many complex effects on trade flows. The overall impact continues to elude empirical studies. World Bank staff estimates, however, that the high levels of protection have a significantly positive impact on bilateral flows in non-fuels goods trade. Doumbia-Henry, C.; Gravel, E. 2006. Free trade agreements and labour rights: Recent developments, in International Labour Review, Vol. 145, No. 3, pp. 185-206.

In the agriculture sector, developing countries will be among the primary beneficiaries of the reduction of both border-protection and the value and quantity of subsidized exports. The increase in minimum access to agriculture market provided in the Uruguay round Agriculture Agreement has given developing country food exporters some additional opportunities.

While there appears to be support for this goal among many, if not most, economists, the public at large is more evenly spilt on this issue, and there are many interest groups which strongly opposed it.

Marjit, S.; Maiti, D.S. 2005. Globalization, reform and the informal sector, Research Paper 2005/12 (Helsinki, United Nations University - World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER)).

Gagnon, J. 2008. Moving out of bad jobs - More mobility, more opportunity, in J. Jtting; J. R. de Laiglesia (eds.): Is informal normal? Towards more and better jobs in developing countries (Paris, OECD), pp. 115-142.

Maloney, W.F. 1998. The structure of labor markets in developing countries: Time series evidence on competing views, Policy Research Working Paper 1940 (Washington, DC, World.

Bank); 2004. Informality revisited, in World Development, Vol. 32, No. 7, pp. 1159-1178.

Furthermore, some of the more altruistic leaders of the developed world are probably even thinking about the welfare of foreign consumers and workers in poor countries as well. Whether trade liberalization policies actually promote all of those interests may be open to debate, but it is clear that many people believe they do and are not simply out to exploit the worlds poor; Rama, M. 2003. Globlization and workers in developing countries, Policy Research Working Paper 2958 (Washington, DC, World Bank).

Kar, S.; Marjit, S. 2001. Informal sector in general equilibrium: Welfare effects of trade policy reforms, in International Review of Economics & Finance, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 289-300.

The time has come to launch the largest liberalization effort in the history of the global system, an effort to achieve global free trade by a date certain (probably 2010 or 2020) vis a new Millennium Round and perhaps one or two successors.

Prospective monetary developments, particularly the onset of record trade deficits in the United States, suggest a similar imperative over the nest year or two.

With the creation of the euro. G-2 management will extend into the monetary arena and become more apparent-including for the next major WTO negotiation.

Note that more than 80 percent of the biodiversity hotspots are located in the developing world. Available at

For instance, Indias concern for technology transfer (to cater to environmental and developmental needs) and preservation of biodiversity as part of its TRIPS negotiating agenda during the Doha Round is a clear reflection of its global concern for sustainable development, as expected from a mature player in the world economy.

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