Handbook

The focus of this course is on the legal structure that affects globalization. For our purposes we can think of globalization as the process by which national economies become interdependent and interlinked. This course introduces students to the legal, business and policy aspects of international trade, focusing on the complex legal framework of the various WTO Agreements. This course analyses the legal framework of the WTO by studying the regulatory legal principles of the WTO and how they operate at both the national and international level. More specifically, the course covers issues such as tariffs and tariff negotiations, quotas, most favoured nation clauses, regional trading blocs, national treatment clauses and exceptions for environmental, health and safety and other policies, anti-dumping, export subsidies, countervailing duties and other topics of contemporary importance currently being debated. The course should give participants a sound understanding of key legal issues and principles relating to international trade and a thorough knowledge and understanding of the importance of domestic and international policy issues to the world trading system.

Main Topics

• History and structure of the WTO
• Dispute Settlement procedures
• General principles of the WTO
• Trade in goods, trade in services and trade and agriculture
• Free trade agreements
• Contemporary issues (such as trade and the environment, labour, etc)
• The intersection between trade law and policy