| dc.description | This book is Volume Five of an Eight-Volume set. All of the Volumes are available in KU ScholarWorks.About the Author:Born in Toronto of Indian and Celtic heritage, Rakesh (Raj) Kumar Bhala is a dual Canadian-U.S. citizen prominent in the fields of International Trade Law, Islamic Law (Sharī‘a), and Law and Literature. Raj is the inaugural Leo. S. Brenneisen Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas School of Law (KU Law). He is published widely world-wide – authoring 100 scholarly articles and 13 books, including the International Trade Law Textbook, which has been used at over 100 law schools around the globe. Ingram’s Business Magazine designated him as one of “50 Kansans You Should Know.”Raj has testified before the U.K. Parliament, House of Commons, International Trade Committee, on trade and human rights. Media frequently call upon Raj. Across 65 consecutive months (from January 2017-October 2022), “On Point” was his column on International Law and Economics, which Bloomberg Quint / BQ Prime (Mumbai) published and distributed to approximately 6.2 million readers globally.Raj is a Harvard Law School (HLS) graduate (Cum Laude). As a Marshall Scholar, Raj earned two Master’s degrees, from the London School of Economics (LSE) in Economics, and from Oxford (Trinity College) in Management (Industrial Relations). His undergraduate degree is from Duke (Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa), where he was an Angier B. Duke Scholar and double-majored in Economics and Sociology. After HLS, Raj practiced at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he twice won the President’s Award for Excellence thanks to his service as a delegate to the United Nations Conference on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), along with a Letter of Commendation from the U.S. Department of State. He is a member of the State Department’s Speaker Program.Raj has served in officer positions at the International Bar Association (IBA) and Inter-Pacific Bar Association (IPBA), on the Executive Board of Directors of the Carriage Club of Kansas City (including as Treasurer), and been on the Alumni Association Board of the University School of Milwaukee (USM), his high school alma mater. He is grateful to his USM teachers for a liberal arts education that made all good things possible. Raj loves fitness training, has finished 115 marathons, including the “Big Five” of the “World’s Majors” (Boston twice, New York twice, Chicago twice, Berlin, and London). He enjoys studying Shakespeare and (especially since becoming Catholic at Easter Vigil 2001) Theology – and watching baseball. | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | Every trading nation has “sensitive sectors.” They are the areas of economic endeavor a country desires to insulate from the competition of freely-traded exports. The sensitivities may be based on cultural legacies (think beef in Korea), political calculations (think dairy products in Canada), or economic consequences (think high-employment sectors in India). These sensitivities are the subject of Volume Six. Part One covers the quintessential sensitive sector: agriculture. Though farm and farmrelated endeavors employ a small fraction of the labor force in developed countries, the percentages are higher in developing and least developed countries. Moreover, agriculture is the one sector that effects every person – everyone must eat. So, this Part steers through the three legs of agricultural trade liberalization per the world’s first multilateral deal on cross-border transactions in this sector, the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture: market access; domestic support; and export subsidies. Further, this Part deals with a closely related matter of concern from ancient to modern times – sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standards, which are the subject of the WTO SPS Agreement. Alas, many controversies remain in this sector, including reforms to the Green Box and (as India presses) public stockholding for food security, and improper invocations of SPS protections. Part Two deals with the dominant economic sector in developed countries: services. It is in services where most of the labor force is employed in them, and migrating from agriculturebased to services-based economies is the goal of developing and developing countries. This Part explains how services are categorized in Sectors, Sub-Sectors, and Sub-Sub-Sectors, and how they are traded across borders through four Modes of delivery. Then, the rules of such trade – horizontal (general) obligations, and specific commitments and exceptions – under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) are explained. Vitally, how to read a Services Schedule, and thus how to understand the multi-dimensional character of services trade liberalization negotiations, are spelled out, and the limited WTO jurisprudence is untangled. Part Three is about a highly contentious sector in which rich countries seek to maintain a lead, and poor countries hope to develop a comparative advantage: patents, trademarks, and copyrights – that is, IPRs. The WTO Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) is the focal point of this Part, both its textual provisions and WTO case law under it. So, too, are novel challenges, such as compulsory licensing and vaccine nationalism, some of which were highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. And, as in any area of International Trade Law, there are problems of enforcement, hence this Part reviews how, why, and who is responsible for policing intellectual property rights (IPRs). Part Four deals with the new frontier of sensitive sectors, namely, digital trade (including electronic commerce). What is digital trade? What is its relation to electronic (e-) commerce? Is it properly the subject of International Trade Law, or does it also implicate issues of antitrust (competition law), and cyber-security? What Digital Trade Agreements currently exist, and what do they say? Which countries incline toward free trade in digital services, and which champion barriers (e.g., data localization), and why? All such questions are in play in this Part. Overall, Volume Six conveys the vital point that unabashed, across-the-board, laissez-faire free trade policy is a quixotic goal in the mind of an ideological economist. In truth, countries understandably need to balance their inclination to free trade against adjustment costs. Like the other seven Volumes of International Trade Law: A Comprehensive ETextbook, this Volume is available Open Access, and thus freely, quickly downloadable. | |
