This chapter explores how labour issues are addressed in international trade agreements. It examines the reasons for including labour provisions, the history of their inclusion in trade agreements, and their effects on workers. Labour provisions are often included in trade agreements in response to the disruptions caused by international trade, to address the effects of trade agreements on workers, and to strengthen weak domestic labour protections. Despite the proliferation of labour provisions in trade agreements, their effects on workers’ lives are limited. The chapter concludes that labour provisions that directly target sites of production may be more effective in improving working conditions.

Interstate diplomacy in early modern Asia involved a framework of a common set of practices shared among Islamic, South East Asian and East Asian polities. This chapter outlines this common framework and then explores the unique articulations of it to be found in the Manchu Qing imperial formation. Qing diplomatic ritual drew from the rich tradition of imperial China, the practices of the Mongol Muslim and Buddhist Chinggisid khanates, the Buddhist notion of chakravartin kingship, and the diplomatic practices of the dominant sects of Tibetan Buddhism. Ritual diplomacy not only presented claims of supremacy among a multitude of Asian rulers, but negotiated military and marriage alliances, established the rules and practices of commercial exchange, moved the unique human and animal products of one kingdom to another, and addressed competing declarations over territory and resources.

This chapter addresses the legal construction that helps to answer the question of how the UN and inter-governmental organisations (IGOs) are separate and autonomous i.e. independent of member states, when member states have created IGOs and sit and vote in their organs. It reminds the reader about the possibility of creation of separate, abstract legal entities, such as clubs, societies, corporations, and states. In international law there needs to be an assessment of whether IGOs are legal subjects of the international legal order, thereby having international legal personality, separate from the states. The chapter presents the International Court's advisory opinion in the Reparations case, which was in favour of the UN possessing international legal personality, with the concomitant right to bring claims against states.

This chapter examines the legal and political economy issues surrounding trade in services, focusing on the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). It contextualises the GATS’s origins, structure, and key obligations, including market access, national treatment, and MFN. The chapter also analyses the complexities of scheduling commitments, exceptions, and the evolving landscape of services trade. It concludes with a critical reflection on the challenges and future prospects of regulating services trade in the context of digital transformation and geopolitical tensions.

This chapter examines the relationship between geopolitical rivalry and world trade law. It begins by discussing the consequences of trade for national power and security, and how dominant states approach foreign economic policy. It then analyses recent geopolitical developments and their implications for the evolution of the international economic order. It concludes by discussing the implications of the analysis for world trade law and policy in the future.

This chapter explains the reasons for the stalemate in the WTO negotiations on domestic agriculture support, public stockholding (PSH) for food security purposes, and fisheries subsidies. The negotiations are crucial for achieving Sustainable Development Goals related to zero hunger, food security, sustainable agriculture, and marine resources. In agriculture, members are divided on disciplining trade-distorting support and addressing historical asymmetries. The PSH negotiations are contentious owing to disagreements on a permanent solution and calculation of the external reference price. Fisheries subsidy negotiations have stalled on the issue of over-capacity and overfishing subsidies, despite progress on illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.

This chapter examines the evolving landscape of digital trade regulation, tracing its transformation from early electronic commerce initiatives to the current focus on the data-driven economy. It analyses the dynamic regulatory models emerging in free trade agreements and digital economy agreements, highlighting the influence of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. The chapter further investigates the progress and challenges in digital trade governance within the World Trade Organization, particularly the Joint Statement Initiative on Electronic Commerce. It concludes by assessing the impact of digitalisation on global trade law, noting both legal innovations and setbacks owing to geopolitical differences and the complexities of integrating domestic data governance with international trade commitments.

This chapter examines the concept of territory. While administrative space was no novelty in East Asia, notions related to space transformed in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Treaty of Nerchinsk marked the borderlines between the the Qing and Russian empires. Similar treaties in the early eighteenth century solidified them. Kangxi initiated a geographical survey spanning the country. This significantly impacted Korea, which made efforts to secure its border, altering perceptions of the state. Russian expansion along the Pacific coast raised concerns in Japan. From the late eighteenth century, Japanese intellectuals explored the Ezo region – areas that had held little interest. These developments introduced fresh concepts like territory, borders, and exclusive ownership (often considered European inventions) into traditional notions of imperial land. The new ideas didn’t supplant existing understandings, or engender a new interpolity system in East Asia.

This chapter historicises the current moment of transformation in international trade governance by examining the evolving boundaries of trade expertise and the shifting techniques of trade governance. It adopts a periodisation of post-Second World War international economic governance, starting with the ‘embedded liberal’ period, continuing with the ‘neoliberal period’, and concluding with the contemporary period of liberalism ‘in motion’ or kineo-liberalism. The chapter demonstrates how the boundaries of the expert field and the available governance techniques are deeply connected to the broader politics of trade governance, reflecting and sustaining larger shifts in convictions concerning the purposes and rationales of international trade governance. The current moment is characterised by instability, uncertainty, and contestation, leading to a denaturalisation of the boundaries of trade governance and a reinterpretation of its fundamental aspects.

This chapter examines the relationship between trade and sustainable development, including its developmental dimension. It argues that trade policy and international trade institutions must be integrated into broader international efforts to promote sustainable development. This requires an end to the siloed treatment of trade and other policy areas. It also requires a more holistic approach to international law-making, including greater cooperation among international organisations and a willingness to make trade-offs between competing goals. Finally, it requires a recognition of the different preferences of rich and poor countries and a willingness to address the power imbalances that exist in the global trading system.

Studies of imperial Chinese and Byzantine diplomacy conventionally assume that their diplomatic norms had indigenous origins that became models for neighbouring polities. This chapter questions this assumption by comparing the diplomatic traditions of empires of Sui and Tang China (581–907), Byzantium (395–1453), Sasanian Iran (224–651), Turkic polities, and smaller Eurasian states. Eurasia shared diplomatic protocols incorporating pageantry, status ranking, displays of obeisance to the ruler, gift exchange, and feasting. Visiting envoys enjoyed rights to safe passage that sometimes were violated during periods of interpolity tension. Peaceful relations were normally signalled when a greater power invested a lesser one as a vassal, and sometimes when two great powers negotiated and ratified written treaties. Diplomatic agreements were reinforced via marriage or fictive kinship relations between rulers, trade accords, and/or direct payments from one polity to another. This customary diplomatic tradition provided rulers with shared standards to negotiate agreements that protected their perceived strategic, political, economic and symbolic interests.