Emerging Powers and the World Trading System: The Past and Future of International Economic Law

Abstract

Attention to policies, laws, regulations, and practices of emerging powers, such as Brazil, China, and India, abounds as their influence over global governance is increasingly felt. So do discussions over the puzzling disenchantment of the United States with the very international economic order (characterized by the World Trade Organization) it built. But Gregory Shaffer, a world-renowned legal realist, stands out by offering an exceptionally in-depth, comprehensive, and pragmatic diagnosis of the rise of the emerging powers and the impacts they bring about in his new book Emerging Powers and the World Trading System. Shaffer convincingly addresses the key question – ‘[h]ow has the international trade and broader economic legal order changed since the WTO’s creation because of Brazil’s, India’s, and China’s rise and their development of trade law capacity?’ (p. 9) and resolves the paradox of why the United States ‘now calls into question the trade law system it created, while emerging economies that long criticized that system for its bias in favor of US interests defend it’ (p. viii). The book has nine chapters, organized into three parts. Part I lays down the foundation by first introducing the book’s purpose, context, and organization (Chapter 1). Chapter 2 describes the analytical framework that focuses on changes in five dimensions – law, institutions, professions, networks, and practices – within countries and at the international level simultaneously, and key concepts such as the theory of trade law capacity. Chapter 3 then identifies four challenges – technical capacity, financial resources, political and economic repercussions from powerful states, and internal governance obstacles – that countries face in developing trade law capacity. Part II – the core of the book – systematically applies the analytical framework of transnational legal ordering and trade law capacity theory and examines Brazil (Chapter 4), India (Chapter 5), and China (Chapters 6 and 7). It documents how the three emerging powers have transformed themselves – in response to the WTO – through changes in profession, institutions, professionals, networks, and practices, and how they now seek to impact the WTO and the global trading system. The chapter on Brazil (Chapter 4) surveys how it became the first emerging economy to build the legal capacity to seriously challenge the US and EU at the WTO and created models that India and China later borrowed. Shaffer and his co-author Michelle Ratton Sanchez Badin detail