Governing US-China Trade Relations
Wednesday, November 3, 2021
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM (Eastern Daylight Time)
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About the Event
No one can quite agree on how best to describe the relationship between the world’s two superpowers, the US and China. Where some see a competition, others see a renewed form of Cold War. At stake may be the future of important struts of the current multilateral system, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO). This event will address the current state and future of the US-China trade relationship. It will consist of a dialogue between two leading US trade academics. Professor Gregory Shaffer, president-elect of the American Society of International Law, will discuss his latest article, appearing soon in the American Journal of International Law. He will describe the economic, geopolitical/national security, and normative/social policy dimensions of that relationship, and his proposals for a middle path between those seeking to reinforce the WTO system by establishing new rules to limit the state’s role in the economy and those who would reject the WTO in favor of a power-based system. He proposes pragmatic reforms to govern the interface of the two states’ respective systems across all three dimensions – a set of proposals that would enable both the US and China to have greater room for bilateral and plurilateral bargaining while still remaining within the umbrella of the multilateral system. Professor Chantal Thomas will comment on Shaffer’s prescriptions.
Read Gregory Shaffer’s latest article on Governing US-China trade relations here.
About the speaker
Gregory Shaffer is chancellor’s professor of law and political science and director of the Center on Globalization, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. He is president-elect of the American Society of International Law, and a member of the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law and the Journal of International Economic Law, among others. He received his JD from Stanford Law School and his BA from Dartmouth College, and practiced law with Coudert Brothers and Bredin Prat in Paris. His publications include nine books and over one hundred articles and book chapters. Recent books include Emerging Powers and the World Trade System: The Past and Future of International Economic Law , and The Globalization of Legal Education: A Critical Perspective (with Bryant Garth, forthcoming).
About the commentator
Chantal Thomas is the Radice Family professor of law and associate dean for academic affairs at Cornell University School of Law. She researches and writes about international law focusing on trade, migration, and development, with underlying interests in the intersection of international law, political economy, and global social justice. Her recent publications include: Race as a Technology of Global Economic Governance (UCLA Law Review, 2021), The Contested Boundaries of International Migration Law in the Post-Pandemic (AJIL Unbound, 2020, with Ian Kysel), and World Trade and Investment Law Reimagined: A Progressive Agenda for Inclusive Globalization (2019, co-editor with Alvaro Santos & David Trubek). She serves on the US State Department’s Advisory Council on International Law.