Several Legal Issues In The Service Trade Subsidies Rule Research

This paper mainly casts an eye on the future perfection of subsidies issues on trade inservices during the whole ongoing negotiation process of General Agreement onTrade in Services (“GATS”). First of all, it starts exploring the issue of the existingsubsidy discipline by referring to the relations between international trade in servicesand multilateral trade system. Meanwhile, issues like service subsidies disciplinesprovided in GATS Article15, trade distortion, public policy objections, as well ascurrent deficiency of statistic information are involved in this part. Secondly, byemploying the methodology of comparative analysis among several agreementsincluding Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (“ASCM”), GATSand European state aid treaties and regulations, and of empirical analysis of casestudies on WTO and European cases, this paper discusses the definition andclassification of service subsidies with trade distort effects, existing subsidiesdisciplines and relevant remedies in GATS. Moreover, it talks about the applicabilitymatters of the countervailing measures into GATS. At last, the author would like topropose a rational and sound negotiation outlook on future framework of the subject,which would hopefully render positive and supportive suggestions.The author believes that the future subsidies disciplines on trade in services shall onlybe applied to those subsidies with distort effects. Service subsidies could be classifiedinto export-oriented subsidies and import-replacement subsidies. This thesis analyzesthe existing GATS subsidies disciplines and remedies in a comprehensive andsystematic manner and seriously takes into consideration the applicability andfeasibility of applying countervailing measures which are definitely unilateral traderemedies into subsidies on trade in services.