Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree M.Com. Development Theory and Policy in the faculty of Commerce, Law and Management at the University of the Witwayersrand, 2013 / This paper undertook qualitative research to determine the trade policy space for South Africa to implement its industrial policy action plan (Ipap). The South African economy was transformed from import substitution in the 1970s to export-orientation in the 1980s. The apartheid regime failed to develop coherent policies for industrialisation. In the 1990s, there was a deliberate government decision as articulated in the GEAR policy to liberalise the economy and with regard to trade this is associated with accession to the World Trade Organisation and commitments made thereof. In 2007, the country adopted the national industrial policy framework to guide its reindustrialisation efforts and subsequently various iterations of the Ipap. Therefore, given that a lot of policy space was lost when the country joined as the WTO as a developed country, the question is “does South Africa have enough policy space to use some of the instruments that were used by successful Asian countries to industrialise”. The WTO made some of these instruments illegal. To analyse policy space, the paper looked at the effect of WTO Agreements on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM), on Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMS), on Government Procurement (GPA), as well as the tariff commitments. The study found that although SCM has made certain subsidies illegal, other kinds of subsidies are allowed such as those for economic development in disadvantaged regions and for rural development. Therefore, strategy and packaging of these subsidies for development is important. TRIMS was found to have significantly reduced policy space by making a number of instruments on foreign direct investment illegal such as enforcing local content as well as export requirements. Since South Africa is not party to the GPA, it retains policy space to use government procurement to promote industrialisation in the country. In terms of tariffs commitment, the study found that there is no “water” between applied and bound rate for a number of critical sectors such as textile, clothing, footwear, and furniture. However, other important sectors such as automotive and automotive components and white goods still have “water” to increase tariff in future as necessary. Therefore, the study concluded that there is policy space to implement industrial policy in South Africa but this requires strategy and closer look at the WTO rules for flexibility.

This research comprehensively analyses how the CJEU and the WTO Tribunals interact with each other. The CJEU has refused to grant direct effect to the WTO's rulings based on unconvincing reasoning, but this has been deemed acceptable because it is necessary to preserve the scope of manoeuvre of the EU's political institutions, and the application of the consistent interpretation principle to the WTO's rulings could balance out the absence of direct effect. So far, the CJEU has cautiously applied the consistent interpretation principle to the WTO's rulings. While the CJEU has construed EU legislation in conformity with the DSB's reports, it did so without referring to such reports. In the future, the CJEU should regularly and explicitly interpret EU law in a manner that is consistent with the WTO's rulings. Moreover, the CJEU's case law reveals that the Nakajima exception's application has been limited, and transformed into a method of the consistent interpretation doctrine. Thus, the CJEU should apply the Nakajima exception in cases where the EU has amended its legislation to implement the WTO's rulings, and interpret the amended legislation consistently with the WTO's rulings. The absence of direct effect for WTO's rulings produces an excessive burden on the EU Member States and their citizens. Therefore, when the reasonable period of time has passed and the EU has not taken any action, or when the compliance panel announces that the amended legislation still infringes on WTO law, the CJEU should grant direct effect to the WTO's rulings. Moreover, WTO tribunals rarely refer to related CJEU judgments to support their decisions. Therefore, when WTO tribunals have to rule on a matter that the CJEU has already decided on and they agree with the decision, they should apply the consistent interpretation principle to the CJEU's decision.

Tariff is a taxation that a government collects on inbound or outbound goods. The Customs, which is the institution performing this function, plays a major role in national financial and economic development. In the world every country has struggled to reduce production cost by marketing economic and trade with foreign countries as well as increasing their competitive ability. Accordingly, bonded system is designed for deferring tariff payment and reliving production burden. Almost every country enacted bonded laws as legal basis to regulate bonded systems. The so-called ¡§bonded cargo¡¨ refers to the cargo which deposit, assemble, arrange, divide up, sort inside bonded area under the monitor by the Customs and is allowed to defer tariff payment. The Customs effectively monitor and control bonded cargo and bonded regions according to customs laws. No matter industrialized countries, developing countries, or the third world countries, their Customs have endeavored to establish bonded system in accordance with their individual sources, economic and trade environments. Under the globalization trend they also establish transnational branches to cope with domestic demand. Furthermore, under the regulations by World trade Organizations or World Customs Organization, The Customs promptly review or revise their polices related to bonded regulations to expedite customs clearance complying with industrial demand. The concerned sphere includes such as bonded warehouse, factory, export processing zone, cross-strait bonder model, developing some specific targets into bonded regions. For example, science-based industrial or agriculture science park, bonded area(free trade zone) and free trade ports will be multiplatform areas in the future. Our bonded affairs also will be varied, complicated and more mature at the same time. This study found that the cross-strait parties enthusiastically push the modernization and globalization of bonded systems with the methods such as website application and clearance, accounting audit. While international economic condition changes swiftly, the industries eager for the Customs speeding up clearance service. Comparatively their bonded measures still can¡¦t meet their request and have some blind spots and bottlenecks. The customs should adopt more opening and automated management models, risk management, accounting theory, new technology etc. to simplify the control of bonded goods as well as shorten process of logistics control. The final goals are to shift their trend from ¡§monitor control ¡§to partnership and finally reach global alignment.

Because of the global economic depression and competitive stress from international industries, Kaohsiung also faces its difficulty for further development and construction. Due to the 911 terrorist attack event in the U.S., the total number of those who travel to Taiwan from January to June of year 2002 decreased 7.3% compared to the same period of year 2001, a sharp decline. In October year 2002, an explosion event happened in Bali in Indonesia, and furthermore, in April year 2003, another disaster, the dreadful SARS disease raged through Taiwan. These could make tourists worry about safety while traveling, making the dull tourism business an even worse situation. In order to carry out decisions made by Council for Economic Planning and Development, starting form January 1st, year 2002, the Executive Yuan opened the gate of visiting Taiwan for people from Mainland China under particular conditions. However, with concerns of safety of the whole island, we still hold serious control of opening our gate for tourism, so the tourism business still cannot make a hit as originally expected. Actually it is a very important step to open the tourism market for people from Mainland China to visit Taiwan, to make the relationship of cross strait normalize. With WTO principles do cross strait share equal rights to open the tourism market to each other. Our government has been seriously considering the issue of Three-Links in recent years but has made only little progress. The present study collected and investigated newspaper articles and editorials related to this issue in Taiwan of year 2002. The findings point out that the two political parties in Taiwan differed a lot in political stands. This may influence the economy in Taiwan. Though Three-Links is not a cure-all, it could definitely benefit the economic development in Taiwan. Moreover, according to interviews with some experts in this field and an analysis of questionnaires, it is easy to tell Three-Links is a future trend. Three-Links can benefit industries in Taiwan to make business contacts with industries in Mainland China, even to broaden the business scope to the whole world. The main spirit of tourism business is ¡§human¡¨. Mainland Chinese who regularly travel abroad and who are willing to visit Taiwan reached up to the number of 1.2 million. Kaohsiung is an international harbor and further a must pass port for Mainland Chinese. This should be an important chance and moment to develop and push Kaohsiung to become the entrance of tourism business in southern Taiwan. Nominal Group Technique (NGT) is one of the Interactive Management (IM) methods. This method can efficiently deal with complicated problems or controversial issues discussed in a group or a society. By questionnaire analysis and the NGT method did I complete this study and achieve the following goals: 1. Cooperative efficient participation 2. Clarify and define issues 3. Form common consensus and conclusion 4. Interactive learning rebuild cognition as a group We vote for the top 10 strategies to urge development of Kaohsiung. We consider that ¡§Make Kaohsiung the entrance of tourism business and deepen the mechanism of culture and biology in southern Taiwan.¡¨ and ¡§Release limitations for Mainland Chinese¡¦s¡¦ visiting Taiwan, make Kaohsiung international airport the first.¡¨ two worth studying future topics and very likely make benefits for the future development of Kaohsiung.

Trade facilitating is a necessary trend for economic globalization. With the raising degree of global free trade, the needs for reducing and eliminating barriers of goods and factors, simplified trade procedure, and efficiency are becoming more notable. Establishing a high-performance trade system is the most important factor to the trade regime and the increase of international trade. Therefore, the studying of reinforcing trade facilitating is becoming increasingly important. This studying focusing on interests brought by trade facilitating to China and the Chinese custom`s policy and mechanism to improve it. Besides, this essay is trying to describe the situation from both theoretical and practical levels. The research finds out that trade facilitating is not only chances but also challenges to Mainland China. Chinese custom learns from developed countries and intensifies reform and abilities, to combine risk manage and custom clearance and to apply modern information technique for improving efficiency, so that Chinese custom can reach the requirements of trade facilitating. Out of reasons, like, small economic basis, relatively weak infrastructure, shortage of capital, and primitive, low manage thought and technique, China has its achievements only in the first stage. There is a gap between China and West countries. The reform and mechanism adopted by custom of People Republic of China is a kind of reference to custom of Republic of China. Further, this essay suggests that customs in cross-strait should set up a channel or reach a administrative arrangement to share custom information, to improve trade facilitating, and, in the end, to realize the goal of global free trade.

Brazil is currently immersed in the project of building a new common market, known as MERCOSUR, with its neighbors Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. It has largely been assumed that this project will produce economic growth and therefore be beneficial for the environment. However, this assumption has recently come into question, as a result of Brazilian and Argentinean efforts to regulate the environmental and health risks associated with retreaded tire imports. Despite the protests of environmentalists, MERCOSUR and WTO tribunals have now issued three separate decisions finding that these measures violate international trade rules. This dissertation examines whether these decisions were correctly decided in light of the relevant scholarly literature on the relationship between trade liberalization and environmental protection, and on regulatory competition theory. I argue that the test applied by WTO and MERCOSUR panels in trade and environment disputes gives insufficient weight to the lessons learned from this literature, and that future panels should adopt a new approach that explicitly draws on these lessons. I then attempt to apply this new approach to the retreaded tire dispute, based on my own examination of the relevant economic and scientific data, and individual interviews I conducted with representatives of the Brazilian government, the Brazilian tire industry, and MERCOSUR.

No description available.

<p>There is an existing conflict between trade and environmental policies. There are different opinions and attitudes in the relation between free trade and environmental protection. Free trade regards environmental factors as part of the comparative advantages that one country may have over another. However, many environmentalists are critical about trade liberalization. The scope of this paper was limited to the interaction between international free trade and the environmental protection. The main objectives of this study was to examine the interaction between trade(free trade) and environment and to analyse the areas of conflict between free trade under the World Trade Organization and environmental protection.</p>

Liberalising trade is not limited to diminishing trade barriers or decreasing tariffs rates, but also ensuring that these efforts are maintained: this is the role of competition rules. / It is common knowledge that for decades Countries have been trying to agree on international harmonised competition rules. Aware of this interaction between trade and competition policies, they knew efforts had to be undertaken to make them co-exist. Unfortunately the dream never came true. And parties only inherited rules of competition hardly recognised, or implicitly applied within the International Trade Law Framework. Even if some implicit rules of competition have been 'injected' in some of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade provisions in the early 1950's, it is only the new 1994 World Trade Organisation Agreements that have consecrated this orientation, drafted so to discipline the Parties as for competition-related behaviour; even if by definition WTO Agreements were not competition agreements. / Far from the debate of their potential harmonisation, the thesis identifies these rules, analyses their evolution within time and their very application through the study of WTO cases. It will establish that the emergence of a competition jurisprudence is an undeniable reality.

<p>There is an existing conflict between trade and environmental policies. There are different opinions and attitudes in the relation between free trade and environmental protection. Free trade regards environmental factors as part of the comparative advantages that one country may have over another. However, many environmentalists are critical about trade liberalization. The scope of this paper was limited to the interaction between international free trade and the environmental protection. The main objectives of this study was to examine the interaction between trade(free trade) and environment and to analyse the areas of conflict between free trade under the World Trade Organization and environmental protection.</p>