. IMPLEMENTATION AND ENFORCEMENT OF TRADE AGREEMENTS The negotiation of trade agreements represents only the most visible part of a trade ...
. IMPLEMENTATION AND ENFORCEMENT OF TRADE AGREEMENTS The negotiation of trade agreements represents only the most visible part of a trade ministry’s responsibilities. Agreements also need to be approved and executed, the opportunities that they create must be exploited through promotion, and — if one or more countries believes that its partners are not fully living up to the terms — these agreements must be enforced by way of the dispute-settlement rules. The process of approval is not dealt with here, as the constitutional rules and political traditions of countries differ greatly on this point. In some countries the approval of trade agreements and other treaties is little more than a formality, while in others the legislative branch may show little deference to the executive. The expanding scope of trade policy has complicated the task of determining whether a partner’s laws, or even one’s own, comply with all of the obligations of the system. Back when tariff measures comprised the great bulk of trade instruments, implementation and compliance meant little more than ensuring that a country’s applied tariffs did not exceed the bound rates, and that the rules of non-discrimination (most favoured nation treatment and national treatment) were not violated. Today it is quite possible for the policymakers in some other ministry to be entirely unaware that a new law or regulation that they are about to enact may clash with the obligations undertaken in one of the more technically complex WTO agreements or FTA chapters. The commitments that countries make on such topics as services, subsidies and technical barriers to trade may be especially susceptible to unintentional violation through the adoption of new laws and policies. Both to defend their rights and to avoid being brought before the WTO Dispute Settlement Body, countries need to keep abreast of any such developments at home or abroad. They also need to be prepared, if necessary, to defend their laws before the Dispute Settlement Body. 44 TRADE POLICY FRAMEWORKS FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: A MANUAL OF BEST PRACTICES The trade ministry should take the lead in ensuring that the country is in compliance with its commitments. A TPF can help in that regard by reviewing the existing commitments and determining whether there is adequate awareness of them in other line ministries. Some countries have in place a formal process by which proposed laws and regulations are reviewed for their WTO consistency. A country also needs to ensure that its partners in trade agreements — both multilateral and regional — abide by their commitments. As summarized in box 5, there are some centralized sources of information that may be monitored. If a country determines that one of its partners does not comply with a commitment and considers that this non-compliance prejudices its trade interests, it does have recourse to action. This includes both soft enforcement and hard enforcement.
No comments