Study On The Legal Regulation Of “Local Content Requirements” Under The WTO

After the financial crisis in 2008,the global economic recession caused trade protectionism to ravage the world once again.Traditional tariff trade barriers shifted to more subtle non-tariff trade barriers.Local content requirements(LCRs)were one of them.Although it has been a trade barrier for many years and has been clearly banned in the relevant WTO regulations,LCRs have emerged in the new financial crisis by a more subtle and diverse way and become more widespread.WTO rules does not work well in regulating the LCRs.So why are the prohibitive provisions in WTO rules ineffective in regulating local content requirements?How should we regulate these new measures effectively in the future? The resolution of these two problems is related to the healthy development of global trade.This thesis mainly focuses on the new local content requirements that emerged after the 2008 financial crisis.Firstly,it analyses emerging local content requirements,further enriching the concept of local content requirements.Secondly,it explores the reasons for the emergence of these new protection measures by summarizing and analyzing the characteristics of these new local content.At the same time,it evaluates the WTO Law's effect of regulating emerging local content requirements by sorting out the legal provisions and cases that settled by Dispute Settlement Body for localcomposition requirements under the WTO Law.The evaluation of its regulatory effect is mainly divided into two parts.First,does the current WTO rules text cover the regulation of emerging local content? Second,can the cases handled by the WTO Dispute Settlement Body properly regulate the requirements of emerging local content by interpreting the existing rules? Finally,it interprets results of the settlements.If the WTO texts cannot be completely covered or the WTO case cannot be used to regulate the existing local content requirements by a new interpretation of the existing rules,then what aspects should the existing rules be improved? What impact will these improvements have on global trade?Chapter 1 introduces the development of basic theories of LCRs in international trade,which mainly includes the extension of the traditional concept of LCRs based on the merge of new local contents.Then through the analysis of its characteristics and the changes of the international trade environment after the financial crisis,I am trying to find out the causes of new LCRs measures in the current international trade.Chapter 2 introduces the existing WTO rules and regulations on local content requirements,and combines the Panel Reports and the Appellate Body reports in the WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism to analyze the existing rules.The author has separately organized the rules related to local content requirements and has analyzed them in combination with the cases.Chapter 3 makes preliminary ideas on the design of a new "Local Content Requirements Code",in view of the problems existing in the local content requirements rules under the WTO law;and proposes a point from the perspective of alternative measures to solve local content problems.At the end,some prospects are put forward for the legal regulation of local content requirements.