Free Trade

Page 1 of 3

Filter category

Feature post image

Politicization of the 5G rollout: Litigation way for Huawei?

February 10, 2023

The Chinese government’s ambition to become the global leader in new technologies, manifested in state-led industrial policies such as Made in China 2025, has prompted a strong response. For example, the United States significantly tightened its export control regulations and expanded grounds for foreign direct investment screening. In turn, the European Union (EU) has been pursuing the policy of technological sovereignty, an integral part of Ursula von der Leyen’s political guidelines for 2019-2024. This growing antagonism between the countries racing for technological superiority, labelled as a “technological de-coupling”, coincided in time with the rollout of the 5G infrastructure, surrounded by controversy over the involvement of Chinese tech companies in the process. In this blog, we capture the politicization of the 5G rollout reflected in the ongoing resistance to the participation of the Chinese technology giant Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (Huawei) in the 5G projects. To tackle this issue, we will shed some light on the 5G…

Read more

US – Origin Marking Requirement: Did the WTO Panel Get the Balance Right between Trade Security and National Security?

January 25, 2023

On 21 December 2022, the WTO Dispute Settlement Panel ruled against the United States (US) on the product labeling requirement for all goods from Hong Kong to be marked “China” as their country of origin. This requirement came from the executive order that then US President Donald Trump signed on 14 July…

Read more

The EU’s Inconsistent Approach towards Sustainability Treaties: Due diligence legislation v. trade policy

November 9, 2022

In February 2022 the European Commission launched a proposal for an EU corporate sustainability due diligence directive (‘CSDDD proposal’). Companies will be mandated, under threat of sanctions, to monitor adverse impacts that may arise throughout their value chain from violations of a series of sustainability treaties: that is, treaties on human rights, labor and the environment. These…

Read more

EU – New Zealand FTA: Towards a new approach in the enforcement of trade and sustainable development obligations

September 28, 2022

 On 30 June 2022, the President of the EU Commission and the New Zealand Prime Minister jointly announced the successful termination of the negotiations for the creation of a new free trade area (FTA) between the European Union and New Zealand. As for New Zealand, the commercial liberalization provided by the new FTA would determine a…

Read more

Overcoming the Global Vaccine and Therapeutics Lag and ‘Vaccine Apartheid’: Abuse of Rights in the EU’s Continued Blocking of the TRIPS Waiver for COVID Vaccines and Related Medicines

January 5, 2022

Entering the third year of this global pandemic, the United States posted a grim global record of 1 million COVID cases on 3 January 2022.  This record, of course, exists in a shadow of relative non-transparency about COVID incidences, fatalities, and hospitalizations in many parts of the world, arising either from authoritarian regimes refusing to provide…

Read more