A Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement for Services?

Sabel²

2021

Global Policy

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At the end of 2017 different groups of WTO members decided to launch talks on four subjects, setting aside the WTO consensus working practice. This paper argues that these 'joint statement initiatives' (JSIs) should seek to establish open plurilateral agreements (OPAs) even in instances where the outcome can be incorporated into existing schedules of commitments of participating WTO members. Designing agreements as OPAs provides an institutional framework for collaboration among the responsible national authorities, transparency, mutual review and learning, as well as alternatives to default WTO dispute settlement procedures which may not be appropriate for supporting cooperation on the matters addressed by the JSIs. In parallel, WTO members should establish enforceable multilateral principles to ensure OPAs are compatible with an open global trade regime. The nascent shift to plurilateral initiativesPlurilateral cooperation is not new for the WTO. Many WTO agreements are the outcome of negotiations among the 'principal suppliers' of products and the principal 'demandeurs' for rules pertaining to a given area of trade policy. Although the practice has been to pursue cooperation

Section: Preparing the Ground For More Variable Geometry In The Wtomentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Fitting Jsis Into the Wtomentioning

confidence: 99%

Plurilateral Cooperation as an Alternative to Trade Agreements: Innovating One Domain at a Time

Sabel²

2021

Global Policy

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“…For industrial products there are a plethora of international bodies that are fora in which international standards are set. There is much less in the way of international standards for services (Hoekman and Mavroidis, 2016).…”

Section: Quality Of Regulation and Regulatory Heterogeneitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Facilitating Trade in Services

2020

SSRN Journal

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In 2016, the Government of India proposed negotiations on an agreement to facilitate trade in services to complement the 2013 WTO agreement on facilitation of trade in goods. The proposal did not find much support, but plurilateral talks launched at the 2017 WTO ministerial conference in Buenos Aires encompass policy areas that are very relevant from a services trade facilitation perspective. This paper argues that participating in the current plurilateral talks can do much to achieve services trade facilitation objectives by identifying good regulatory practices. Although elements relevant to services trade facilitation are on the table in the WTO, there are important gaps. Identifying priorities for complementary international cooperation to facilitate trade in services on a plurilateral basis requires initiatives that bring together governments, services industry associations and sectoral regulators.

“…The GATS does not have the equivalent of a Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) agreement with its presumption that use of international standards implies WTO consistency of the measure. Hoekman and Mavroidis (2016) argue that the absence of TBT type norms in the GATS is due in part to a dominance of market access concerns and differences in view regarding the application of a 'necessity test' under GATS Art. VI:4 but also to a relative absence of international standardization of services, reducing the utility of a TBT-like reliance on international standards as a way of satisfying the national treatment principle.…”

Section: Broader Policy Considerations and Alternative Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

National Tax Regulation, Voluntary International Standards, and the GATS:Argentina–Financial Services

Delimatsis

2018

World Trade Review

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Can a WTO Member discriminate against foreign suppliers of services located in jurisdictions that refuse to share information with a government to permit it to determine if its nationals engage in tax evasion? Does it matter if the Member uses standards developed by an international body as the criterion for deciding whether to impose measures? In Argentina–Financial Services, the WTO Appellate Body held that services from jurisdictions that share financial tax information may be different from services provided by jurisdictions that do not cooperate in supplying such information. It overruled a Panel finding that measures to increase taxes on financial transactions with non-cooperative jurisdictions were discriminatory. We argue that the AB reached the right conclusion on the basis of the wrong arguments; that it missed an important opportunity to clarify what WTO Members are permitted to do to enforce their domestic regulatory regimes; and increased the scope for confusion and future litigation by considering that the likeness of services and service suppliers may be a function of prevailing domestic regulatory regimes.