Wto Safeguards System Research

When the import of certain products increases so suddenly that it causes or threatens to cause a serious injury to the domestic industries which produces like or directly competitive products, the importing country can take restrictive measures to safeguard its industry. To protect a WTO member's economic interests, safeguards allow a country to suspend its obligations in the WTO. That is to say, if the enforcement of WTO agreements incurs a serious injury or a threat to cause serious injury to a country, it can remedy the injury or prevent the threat by imposing restrictions on the importAs an important trade policy measure to remedy injury and balance trade interests, safeguards have been paid more and more attention by all the WTO members. In the product trade system, safeguard are called" the safe valve" of the WTO. They play a vital role in stabilizing the multilateral trade.After China's accession to the WTO, some Chinese exported products with strong competitive ability establish their superiority over the relevant products of the importing countries. Meanwhile, some foreign imported products also show superiority over similar Chinese products. Under above mentioned conditions, studying the WTO safeguards system will assure Chinese domestic industries of consistent and healthy developments: On the one hand, to provide reasonable protection in time to domestic industries, and to supply them with enough time for adjustment and the preparation for international competition; On the other hand, because other countries want to impose safeguards on Chinese exported products comprehensively after the "anti-dumping storm" towards China, we should make appropriate measures to prevent the tendency.This dissertation not only probes the rationality of safeguards from the angle of politics, economics and philosophy, but also studies systematically the developments, contents and practices of safeguards by way of historical, comparative and positive analysis. This dissertation is composed of more than 60,000 words and divided into seven sections as follows:Section One: The definition of Safeguards. Because safeguards may be understood in both broad sense and narrow sense, domestic scholars studied it in different scope. In this dissertation, based upon the general domestic scholars' opinions and the foreign study tradition about safeguards, the author defines WTO safeguards in narrow sense. The author alsosummarizes the nature and legal characters of safeguards.Section Two: The Theoretical Basis of WTO Safeguards System. This dissertation probes the rationality of the existence of safeguards from the perspective of politics and economics. Furthermore, the author studies the legal theoretical basis of safeguards form the three following angles: First, the theory of substantial change of circumstance; Second, the theory of self-supporting act; Third, the theory of the coordination of legal values.Section three: The Historical Origin of The WTO Safeguards System. This section outlines the whole procedures of the WTO safeguards system, including its prototype, development and formation.Section four: The Contents of The WTO Safeguards System. The WTO safeguards system is composed of two parts: First, the ordinary safeguards system which includes the article 19 of GATT and the Agreement on Safeguars, Second, the special safeguards system which is composed of the special safeguard clause in the Agreement on Agriculture, the transitional safeguards clause in the Agreement on Textiles a Clothing, and the emergent safeguard clause in the GATS. This dissertation interprets and criticizes those contents in details.Section five: Comparisons of the WTO Safeguards System and other Relevant Systems. This section compares the WTO safeguards system not only with the systems of anti-dumping and anti-subsidy, but also with the safeguards systems of the United States and the European Union.Section six: Study of The Cases about The WTO Safeguards System. As an innovation, this dissertation studies the cases th...