Under Pressure: Intractable Trade Conflicts and Korea – Pneumatic Valves

The Appellate Body (AB) report in Korea–Pneumatic Valves is among the most structurally complex of recent trade remedies reports. The AB weaves a complicated web to explicate the intricacies of the relationship among the relevant provisions on injury determination in anti-dumping disputes in the midst of a contentious and long-running series of disputes between two close regional trading powers. This Article first examines the Korean investigation and its significance in economic terms. Second, it analyzes the AB's conclusions on Article 6.2 of the Dispute Settlement Understanding regarding the panel request and the significance of the AB's treatment. Third, it studies the AB's comments on the panel's anti-dumping calculations where the AB amplifies its prior pronouncements on the elements of injury and causation. Finally, the Article situates this dispute in the broader political debates playing out both at the AB and between the two disputing parties.

EUROPEAN UNION IN WTO’S DISPUTE SETTLEMENT SYSTEM

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) serves as a forum for co-operation, currently for as many as 164 countries, and in addition, it allows for the resolution, also amicably, of trade conflicts between parties, consequently, settling disputes between them. One of essential provisions of the Uruguay Round (UR) of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) included the introduction of a new dispute settlement mechanism, that is to say, the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU), which became effective on 1 January 1995. Member States of the European Union were not only actively involved in developing the rules of the international trade system, but they also influenced, to a large extent, the form of both such rules and of ongoing trade negotiations, as well as they assumed and still assume responsibility for the final arrangements. Hence, their role in the multilateral trade system is both active and passive. This paper aims to demonstrate the functioning of the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism and show the role which the European Union serves in this system. The Article employs an analytical and descriptive method. It draws on sources from the national and international literature and WTO’s databases.

Why Tariff and Trade War?

<p>By see the tariffs and trade wars in different time periods, each countries’ aim to start the trade war and tariff are protecting themselves. Analyzing and comparing the tariff acts in the colonial and antebellum period, the trade conflicts between the United States and Japan in the 1980s, and 2019’s China-United States trade war, we can see how tariffs work the same but also different in different time periods. </p>

Reshoring to the EU and the USA: problems, trends and prospects

Reshoring is recognized as one of the tools to achieve the goal set in Western countries to restore the role of manufacturing in the economy, its “renaissance”, stimulate innovation and increase employment. This article analyzes current trends and prospects for reshoring. Obstacles to the successful relocation of Western companies' production capacities to maternal jurisdiction were identified, the key role of which was played by the US protectionist policy and the escalation of trade conflicts. As a result, after increasing the cases of reshoring in previous years, in 2018-2019, the process of moving production facilities of western companies to other countries of Southeast Asia at lower costs received an additional impetus. It is concluded that the state policies of countries aimed at reviving their industry and the technology of the fourth industrial revolution have a significant impact on the change in the position of individual countries in the international division of labor, which gives an opportunity for “catching countries” to develop the economy and improve their position in the world trade.

Comparing Blockchain Standards and Recommendations

Since the introduction of Bitcoin, the term “blockchain” has attracted many start-ups and companies over the years, especially in the financial sector. However, technology is evolving faster than standardization frameworks. This left the industry in the position of having to use this emerging technology, without being backed by any international standards organization regarding for neither the technology itself, nor for a blockchain specific information security framework. In times of the General Data Protection Regulation and growing international trade conflicts, protecting information is more relevant than ever. Standardization of blockchains is an appeal to raise the development of information technologies to the next level. Therefore, this paper shall provide an overview of standardization organization’s publications about blockchains/distributed ledger technologies, a set of comparison criteria for future work and a comparison of the existing standards work itself. With that information, aligning to existing standardization efforts becomes easier, and might even present the possibility to create frameworks where there are none at the moment.