Studies On Multilateral Competition Rules Of WTO

With the establishment of WTO, the tariff barriers and non-tariff barriers amongst governments has been eliminated gradually and the liberation of trade has developed in more depth .However, liberation of trade has never developed in isolation, and it is necessary to have the security of fair and orderly competition. In the process of trade liberation, competition policies have always been the key issue to consider. Both in terms of GATT, the former form of WTO, and WTO itself, trade policies have always had a close relationship with competition policies, which is evident in both the fundamental principles of WTO framework and specific provisions of GATT, GAT, TRIPS, etc. Trade policies and competition policies are complementary to each other; on the other hand, in some circumstances there is contradiction between them, which is primarily evident in terms of the anti-competition effect of trade policies and the anti-trade effect of competition policies. The present endeavor in this article is to study the multilateral competition rules of WTO in order to make the competition policies contribute more to the liberation of trade on the basis of the coordination of the contradiction between trade policies and competition policies.There are more than 30 thousand words in this article, with four sections to illustrate the content of the article.The first section is a brief introduction about the multilateral competition rules of WTO. It begins with the conception and development of multilateral rules as well as the relationship between competition policies and trade policies, so as to illustrate the basic conceptual issues and the fundamental theories concerned with multilateral competition rules. The focus of this section is the relationship between competition policies and trade policies of WTO, concentrating on the antidumping regulations and competition rules of WTO, and an analysis of the close correlation as well as the contradiction between competition policies and trade policies is given.The second section illustrates the specific multilateral rules of WTO, giving concrete analysis on the WTO competition rules included in GATT, GATS, TRIPS, including the specific content, the scope of application, and the illustration of corresponding theories concerned with these competition rules.The third section analyzes the flaws and defects of WTO multilateral rules. This section gives a general comment in terms of the WTO multilateral rules on the basis of the second section, which demonstrates that the content of contemporary competition rules are scattered, disordered and unsystematic, and it lacks the regulation on companies'anti-competitive activities such as mergers and acquisitions, and it is not capable of dealing with the anti-competitive activities carried out by private entities, especially transnational corporations, which are not supported by states, whether it is solo or conjunctive actions. It is exactly the fact that the capacity of contemporary WTO competition rules is not satisfactory that has led to the diminished influence of trade liberation. It is necessary to solve the problems concerned with the competition rules under the WTO framework in order to enhance and ensure the achievements of trade liberation and to establish a fair, healthy and orderly competition order for the market.The fourth section demonstrates the methods for the improvement the competition rules under WTO. This section starts with an analysis on the modes and defects of the contemporary international coordination on competition rules, which shows that the coordination and perfection of competition rules under the WTO framework would be an appropriate and rewarding method. Then a comprehensive analysis of the opinions hold by developed countries, including EU, US and Japan, and developing countries in terms of the coordination and perfection of competition rules under the WTO framework is given. At last the article holds that the concrete ways via which the perfection of competition rules can be accomplished include"competition way"and"WTO way", and it gives an analysis about the advantages and disadvantages of each way. The author figures out that due to the differences in terms of the competition cultures in various countries and the sovereign issues, it is pretty difficult to reach strictly binding agreements like TRIPS in the area of competition rules. A more realistic solution is to establish a framework agreement concerned with competition rules first, and then go on to conduct specialized legislation on WTO competition rules when time is appropriate.