The Research On The Legal Issues Of National Treatment In U.S.-Mexico Trucking Case

In the service sector, National Treatment means that members of the party to sign theagreement by either party to the other party or parties to the agreement, giving their servicesand service providers equally treatments in various aspects such as laws, domestic regulationsand management as basic legal principle. The main purpose of this principle is to ensure thatthe foreign service and the service provider are treated equally in the host country in thedomestic market, domestic industry to against discrimination from national service providersin every aspect of the procedure.National Treatment is one of the core concepts of international trade liberalization. It isof great importance for the foreign entities to gain equal opportunities for competition and hasbeen the widely applied rules in the fields of goods trading. However, in the areas of trade inservice, General Agreement on Trade in Services (GAT) which entered into force in1995isan integral part of the WTO Agreement and its definition of trade in services has beenuniversally accepted. What’s more, the National Treatment in it was just expressed as limiteddetailed promises and the parties still had disputes and differences regarding its applicablerange, implementation and some key concepts. For a long time, the National Treatmentconcerning trading in goods has been clearly classified which can be done though the tariffs.But the National Treatment concerning trading in services is difficult to define.This paper take the United States and Mexican trucking case as an example, analyzingthe controversial issues about this case that whether the United States had violated itsobligations as promised in NAFTA and to explore the National Treatment concerning tradingin services. The first section of this paper states the factual background, main facts and legalprocess of the Trucking case. The second and third section of this essay focusing on marketaccess, domestic regulation which are the most concerned issues about National Treatment inthe U.S. Trucking case. The fourth section shows, by studying this case concerning nationaltreatment would help to analyze similar future disputes concerning trading in services. What’smore, with respect to the main issues raised in the section three, some enlightenment forChina will be made at the end of this paper.