As the central international trade organization, the World Trade Organization (WTO) bears a highly important role in the governance of the multilateral trad¬ing system. In parallel with the WTO, free trade agreements (FTAs) and vari¬ous investment treaties, including bilateral investment treaties (BITs), have been proliferating and playing an important part in the contemporary international economy.
Although developed on a separate track, the WTO and other trade or invest¬ment agreements are not mutually exclusive or irrelevant. Instead, the WTO agreements have been incorporated directly or by reference into many FTAs or BITs. Trade and investment regimes may concurrently deal with the same subject matter (such as state-own enterprise, labor or corruption). Further, certain investors have strategically challenged the host states’ breaches of the WTO agreements in light of relevant BIT standards, which arguably might bring more WTO claims into the reach of investor– state arbitration.
Understanding the cross-cutting issues between trade and investment regimes are important and challenging, which will benefit students’ knowledge in the field of international economic law. Students with basic knowledge of WTO law or investment law will be good for this seminar.
The tentative topics are as follows.
1. Trade law and investment law: commonality and difference
2. National treatment, trade law and investment law
3. Protection of investors in trade and investment regimes
4. Investment incentives, trade law and investment law
5. Performance requirements, trade law and investment law
6. State-own enterprise, trade law and investment law
7. General Exception, trade law and investment law
8. WTO law as the applicable law in investment dispute through fair and equitable treatment
9. WTO-plus intellectual property rights and indirect expropriation
10. Utilizing WTO law in investor-state arbitration
11. FTA non-trade chapter and investment chapter
12. Labour right protection in trade and investment chapters
13. Remedies in WTO dispute settlement and investor-state arbitration
14. Investment against states: investment arbitration and WTO litigation
15. Is the WTO Appeal Body a model for appeal in investor-state arbitration?