Study On The Jurisdictional Conflict Between WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism And RTAs Dispute Settlement Mechanism

With the rapid development of economy in the world today, multilateral tradeliberalization and regional economy integration have become the world’s two bigtrends of economic development, especially in the case of the multilateral tradenegotiation is facing with many difficulties, regional trade agreements fully show theadvantage of their development role and constantly emerges, at the same time, theyall have dispute settlement mechanism of themselves. As a result, the conflictsbetween the WTO dispute settlement mechanism and the RTAs dispute settlementmechanism appear, wich have increasingly become the focus of scholars ’ attention.But all of the scholars compare the WTO dispute settlement mechanism and the RTAsdispute settlement mechanism from the macroscopic perspective, few scholars furtherstudy on the jurisdictional conflict between the two dispute settlement mechanisms,this is bad for comprehensive understanding of the conflicts between WTO and RTAs.The article starts with a general view of the two dispute settlement mechanisms,on the basic of comparing discusses the relationship between them. Although theyhave some similar points in the regulations, both in the dispute settlement body anddispute settlement procedures have many differences, the priority of the RTAs disputesettlement mechanism will provide experiences and lessons for WTO disputesettlement mechanism.Why do the WTO dispute settlement mechanism and the RTAs disputesettlement mechanism have the jurisdictional conflict? The primary causes are asflows: the overlap of the rights and obligations of the WTO agreements and RTAs,also, the conflict of WTO and RTAs dispute settlement mechanism. The two reasonsprovide theoretical possibility for the conflict. And the direct reason is the forumshopping of parties, wich urge the jurisdiction conflict actually happened.As a result, the jurisdictional conflict leads to the parallel litigation. The cases of "Argentina-Definitive Antidumping Duties on Poultry from Brazil" and"Mexico–Tax Measures on Soft Drinks and Other Beverages" are typical cases, thenwe can see the parallel litigation has many negative effects: expensive litigation costsand conflicting ruling.Because of the negative effects of the jurisdictional conflict, we should findsolutions which can solve the jurisdictional conflict. Both of the jurisdiction clause inthe RTAS and the traditional Jurisdiction-regulating rules applicable under domesticlaw are impracticable. But the judicial inclusiveness by the RTAs judicial bodies tothe WTO can be seen as an effective countermeasure.The countermeasures China should adopt in order to solve the jurisdictionalconflict are as follows: On the one hand, further studying the WTO clauses and thetypical cases, on the other hand, making full use of the advantage of the jurisdictionalconflict.