Technical Barriers to Trade Provisions in Regional Trade Agreements

78 Pages Posted: 20 Jun 2012

See all articles by Lee Ti Ting

Lee Ti Ting

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Date Written: June 20, 2012

Abstract

The proliferation of regional trade agreements (“RTAs”) behoves all WTO members to assess the extent to which RTAs depart from fundamental principles in the WTO such as the most-favoured-nation (“MFN”) treatment in the GATT and in particular, the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade. This paper focuses on technical barriers to trade (“TBT”) provisions in RTAs concluded by the United States, European Union, Australia and Singapore and finds that these TBT provisions complement the existing disciplines in the TBT Agreement. To the extent that TBT provisions in RTAs may be inconsistent with the TBT Agreement, this paper examines the extent to which they can be justified under Article XXIV of GATT. This paper concludes that the ambiguity of key terms in Article XXIV of GATT allows WTO Members to adopt an expansive interpretation of the scope of Article XXIV of GATT.

Keywords: Regional Trade Agreements, RTAs, Most-favoured-nation, MFN, Technical Barriers to Trade, TBTs, GATT

JEL Classification: F02, F10, F20, F30, F40

Suggested Citation

Ting, Lee Ti, Technical Barriers to Trade Provisions in Regional Trade Agreements (June 20, 2012). Society of International Economic Law (SIEL), 3rd Biennial Global Conference, Working Paper No. 2012/12, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2088215 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2088215

Lee Ti Ting (Contact Author)

affiliation not provided to SSRN ( email )

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
307
Abstract Views
1,679
Rank
180,386
PlumX Metrics