Business Law
I. INTRODUCTION
ALTHOUGH THE ABOVE-CITED QUOTE arose in a case dealing with the legitimacy of a forum selection clause in an international contract for towage, the logic of Chief Justice Burger is perhaps even more apparent in the context of the ongoing regional and global integration of trade regimes. Since the 1994 Marrakesh Agreement, the World Trade Organization (“WTO”) has represented a certain, though not total, measure of trade integration at the global level. The WTO oversees states' duties with respect to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (“GATT”), the General Agreement on Trade in Services (“GATS ”), the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (“TRIPS”), and certain plurilateral agreements dealing with trade in civil aircraft, government procurement, dairy products, and bovine meat. To aid in the enforcement of the provisions contained within these agreements, there is also a dispute settlement mechanism within the WTO to handle disputes arising under any of the aforementioned agreements. Though the WTO has represented a major step towards the global integration of trade, agreement on such a broad scale between participants of remarkably different economic prowess, production capability, and product focus has inevitably created a regime left with many jurisdictional questions. In a pseudo-protectionist vein, (although some would argue, and quite convincingly so, that these measures are applied in only a protectionist manner) the GATT allows for the imposition of anti-dumping and countervailing duties.
One of the most important aspects of the WTO is its allowance for regional integration agreements, [FN2] which are often able to bridge certain gaps the resolutions of which are presently impossible in the global context. The European Union (“EU”) provides the best example of regional integration at the moment, but other instruments have set up similar, though not identical, types of arrangements...
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