How China's Employment Problems Became Trade Problems: China, Labour Law, and the Rule of Law

In this article, I focus on the potential trade spillovers of Chinese policies to maintain employment. Chinese leaders are determined to maintain employment and have long ignored employment laws that could empower workers. But in 2007, China reformed its labor laws and allowed wide public comment. The new laws enhanced protections for workers, but the consensus among scholars, NGOs, and the US State Department is that these labor laws, like earlier laws, are unevenly and rarely enforced. I argue that Chinese failure to enforce these laws breachits WTO obligations. WTO members could use GATT Article XXIII, which establishes a "right of redress" for changes in domestic policy that systematically erode market access commitments even if no explicit GATT rule has been violated. Used creatively, this strategy could enable WTO member states to encourage China to do a better job of enforcing its labour laws.China, WTO, trade, labor, employment, market access

Is the Wedding of Trade and Human Rights a Marriage of Convenience or a Lasting Union?

A review of: Forced to Be Good: Why Trade Agreements Boost Human Rights. By Emilie Hafner-Burton. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009. 220pp

The European Response to Public Demands For Global Corporate Responsibility

This report discusses the willingness of the European business community to adopt the practice of corporate social responsibility in their ethical treatment of employees, communities and the environment. The authors discuss why corporate citizenship has taken firmer root in Europe as opposed to the United States and Japan and makes suggestions for ways in which the government can encourage greater corporate social responsibility

Trade and the American Dream: A Social History of Postwar Trade Policy

Every hour of every day Americans see, smell, taste, or hear goods and services traded between the United States and other nations. Trade issues are front-page news but most Americans know little about the potential impact of global economic interdependence on their jobs, standard of living, and quality of life. In Trade and the American Dream, Susan Aaronson highlights a previously ignored dimension of the United States trade policy: public understanding. Focusing on the debate over the three mechanisms designed to govern world trade—the International Trade Organization (ITO), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the World Trade Organization (WTO)—she examines how policymakers communicate and how the public comprehends trade policy. Since 1947 the U.S. has led global efforts to free trade, and support for freer trade policies and for an international organization to govern world trade has become dogma among policymakers, business leaders, and economists. Relaying on archival research, polling data, public documents, interviews, and Congressional testimony, Aaronson shows that the public also matters in trade policy decisions. If concerns about the implications of economic interdependence remain unaddressed, American trade policy and an international trade organization are vulnerable to a surge of populism and isolationism. While Americans became addicted to imported cars, radios, computers, and appliances, a growing number saw the costs of freer trade policies in the nation’s slums, poverty statistics, crime rate, and unemployment figures. Concerns about freer trade policies reached a crescendo in the mid-1990s, especially as Congress debated U.S. participation in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Aaronson suggests ways to create greater public understanding for the GATT/WTO and international trade. If national trade policy is to play in Peoria, Americans must first understand it. Susan Ariel Aaronson is assistant professor of history at the University of North Texas and guest scholar of economics at the Brookings Institution, where she researched and wrote much of Trade and the American Dream. Her research on public understanding of global trade policy has been featured in Time, The Wall Street Journal, and on C-SPAN and National Public Radio. Essential reading for anyone who needs to know how trade policy is made. --American Historical Review An insightful and useful study of the public policy making process. --American Studies Looks at the history of the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade, the aborted International Trade Organization and the World Trade Organization. Aaronson acknowledges the importance of these international agreements and organizations, but she cautions that there is a tension between global economic interdependence and U.S. democracy. --National Journalhttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_economics/1001/thumbnail.jp

Unexpected Bedfellows: The GATT, the WTO and Some Democratic Rights

The WTO system and democratic rights are unexpected bedfellows. The GATT/WTO requires governments to adopt policies that provide foreign products (read producers) with due process, political participation, and information rights related to trade policymaking. Because these nations also provide these rights to their citizens, a growing number of people are learning how to influence trade-related policies. As trade today encompasses many areas of governance, these same citizens may gradually transfer the skills learned from influencing trade policies to other public issues. Thus, the WTO not only empowers foreign market actors, but also citizens in repressive states. We use both qualitative and quantitative analysis to examine whether membership in the WTO over time leads to improvements in these democratic rights. Our qualitative analysis shows that these issues are discussed during accessions and trade policy reviews. Quantitative analysis examines how members of the GATT/WTO perform on these democratic rights over time. We use a cross-national time series design of all countries, accounting for selection issues of why countries become members of the GATT/WTO regime. We find that longer GATT/WTO membership leads to stronger performance on our metrics for political participation, free and fair elections, and access to information