On The Principle Of National Treatment Of Foreign Investment In The Wto Multilateral Agreement Group

The WTO handles the National Treatment of International direct investment more successfully than the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) and Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) in the recent years, as the WTO is the successor to the GATT system, which successfully covers the international trade in goods that relates to foreign direct investment utterly. While there are a lot of legal problems exists in the National Treatment of WTO system. This paper analyses the National Treatment of foreign investment on the base of jurisprudence as the followings: The legal value of National Treatment is to secure non-discrimination and farsightedness, to create a relatively fair play field for the residenter and the foreigner in order to realize the liberalization of trade and investment. It doesn't grow into a common international responsibility or unwritten law other than relativity and non-obligation de jure or de facto. It is a country's economic sovereignty to decide whether to give a foreign investment National Treatment or not. The National Treatment includes four legal factors: object, subject matter, consult rules and consult target. Ultra National Treatment should not all be canceled for most of them are equitable and legitimate, and inevitable in our country. Furthermore, National Treatment contains ultra National Treatment and differential treatment from the point of jurisprudence. The Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures confers foreign investment national treatment although its National Treatment is of trade in goods from the legal nature. But the dispute on what Trims should be bound by the agreement is fierce in the international trade circle. The National Treatment of GATS is specific commitment in nature, and only refers to post-entry National Treatment which requires the host country to accord to services and service suppliers of any other Member, either formally identical treatment or formally different treatment to secure the equality of competitive opportunity.