An Analysis Of Safeguard Measures In Regional Trade Agreement

The regional trade agreement (hereinafter referred to "RTA"), thesymbol of bilateral economic order which is the counterpart ofmultinational economic order established by World Trade Organization(hereinafter referred to "WTO") has gained much focus these years. On1stAugust,2011, the RTA between China and Costa Rica–China's first suchbilateral RTA with a Central American country–officially came into force,which is the10thRTA signed by China. In establishing RTAs, the traderelief measures, especially the safeguard measures, are always to be the hotissue. This essay begins with the safeguard measures in RTAs, afteranalyzing the safeguard measures in RTAs China has signed, tries to raiseseveral valuable advices for the design of the clauses of safeguard measuresin RTAs China will sign afterwards.The essay has three main sections. The first section introduces thesafeguard measures in different RTAs, including Global SafeguardMeasures and Bilateral Safeguard Measures and then in the second part, theauthor attempts to discuss the legality of the safeguard measures in RTAsunder the framework of WTO. In this part, together with the discrepancybetween Article.24of GATT and the legal framework under WTO, theparallelism principle created by WTO panels and Appellate Body inpractice would be fully discussed. In the last section, the safeguardmeasures in RTAs signed by China would be given the most importance.All the RTAs signed by China have been divided into three categories andsafeguard measures in different categories would be analyzed separately. Inall of the RTAs, China－ASEAN (Association of Southeastern Asian Nations) RTA will be mainly discussed, not only because it is the first RTAsigned by Chinese government, but it also proves to be a module for theestablishment of late RTAs. Based on the analysis, the author will try hisbest to raise some suggestions for the arrangement of safeguard measuresin RTAs China will take part in.As China is negotiating with several countries and regions on theestablishment of RTAs, the arrangement of trade defense instruments－safeguard measures in particular－prove to be very significant. Though theprevious RTAs signed by China and other countries, normally developingcountries have made a great contribution in this field, a lack of experiencein negotiating with developed countries still restricts the efficiency andutility of concerning safeguard measures, especially when it comes to theconcessions China had to make in order to be admitted by WTO. Also inthe meantime, in negotiating with certain developing countries, China shallabide by the obligations under RTAs, not to follow the same oldcatastrophic road taken by MERCOSUR(Mercado Común del Sur) whenBrazil and Argentina dominated all the RTA.