The Evolution Of The Safeguards System Under The Gatt / Wto Framework

The thesis targets the research on the normal safeguards (globalsafeguards) under the goods trade, following the clue of research on itshistorical development, and mainly deals with the evolution anddevelopment of the safeguard mechanism in the period of GATT andWTO.The research in this thesis is conducted in two aspects:In the first aspect, the research is conducted on the developmentand negotiation history to specify the evolution track of the safeguardrules. Through reviewing and analyzing the history, the thesis is intendedto arouse our awareness of the fact that the essence of theestablishment of the safeguard mechanism is the outcome of balancingthe open trade with the industry protection, and the existence of thesafeguard mechanism has resulted in an equilibrium in differentrequirements from various domestic interest groups under theprecondition of trade liberalization.In the second aspect, the research, starting from the analysis of therelevant findings reports of the WTO DSB, is conducted to clarify theattitude adopted by WTO (especially the DSB) toward the application ofthe safeguard rules to WTO members. Firstly, based on the study on thefindings of the 13 DSB reports, the thesis has summarized three majorreasons for which it is decided by the WTO that the initiatorsimplementing safeguard measures have violated the WTO rules bytaking relevant measures: (1) a safeguard measure which does notconform to the "unforeseen development" requirement has beenlaunched;(2) the determination on the causation relationship in asafeguard measure does not conform to the relevant requirements ofthe WTO rules;(3) the implementation of a safeguard measure does notconform to the "parallelism principle". These three reasons areregarded by this thesis as the "three ruling criterions" in ruling asafeguard measure against the relevant WTO rules and at the same time,are the difficult legal points to cope with in the present research onsafeguard measures.On the basis of the above-mentioned research, the author of thisthesis has made an initial judgment on the future development of thesafeguard measures.Finally, this thesis has offered policy-related suggestions to Chinaon the investigation and countermeasures relating to safeguardmeasures.