Completing the World Trading System

Unimpeded world trade is still a dream. We may have virtually eliminated most border restrictions, but persistent discriminatory measures within borders - in the shapes of restrictive investment policies, inappropriate regulatory interference, and restraints on competition - still have the power to stifle foreign entrants to domestic markets.

Completing the World Trading System proposes to confront these trade-distorting forces at a new round of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Drawing on many years of international trade law practice and policymaking, the authors present a detailed agenda designed to:

• * deepen market access for all goods, services, and intellectual property
• * facilitate and protect investment by foreign enterprises
• * overcome disparities of national regulatory schemes
• * ensure nondiscriminatory business operations in foreign markets
• * reinforce and support evolving international economic realities

This timely, forward-looking book also shows how major regional trading arrangements have in fact achieved deeper economic integration than the WTO regime. Incorporating this evidence - as well as other proposals from the academic and policy communities - Completing the World Trading System crystallizes the most important trends in current international trade Law.

"What a superb tour of the horizon this is. This text provides more thought and vision to the trade challenges of the future than any book I have seen in years. The tough trade issues of recent years have been characterized by more heat than light. Here''s a book that finally provides some light."

The Hon. Clayton Yeutter, former U.S. Trade Representative and Secretary of Agriculture

"On the eve of the millennium round of trade negotiations it is important that people engage at every level and consider every option. That is why this magisterial work is important to the debate process. It will irritate some and leave others breathless in the wake of the bow wave of its scope, vision and detail."

The Rt. Hon Mike Moore, former New Zealand Prime Minister and Minister of Overseas Trade