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Abstract
This note offers reflections on qualified market access (QMA)—the practice of linking trade agreements to values such as human rights, labour standards, or environmental protection. This idea has been suggested by political theorists as a way of fulfilling our duties to the global poor and of making the global economic system more just, and it has influenced a number of concrete policies, such as European Union (EU) trade policies. Yet, in order to assess its merits tout court, different perspectives and disciplines need to be brought together, such as international law, economics, political science, and philosophy. It is also worth reflecting on existing practices, such as those of the EU. This note summarises some insights about QMA by drawing such research together and considers the areas in which further research is needed, whilst reflecting also on the merits of interdisciplinary exchanges on such topics.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This note was written in collaboration with Kamala Dawar, Aaron James, Lars Nilsson, Clara Portela, Mathias Risse, and L. Alan Winters. Aside from those who offered direct input, we would also like to thank Anne van Aaken, Clara Brandi, Simon Evenett, Florian Ostmann, Sebastian Plappert, and Sharlene Ramlall.
Notes
1 C. Barry and S. Reddy, International Trade and Labour Standards: A Proposal for Linkage (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
2 For details of the WTO GSP system, see L. Bartels, ‘The Appellate Body Report in European Communities—Conditions for the Granting of Tariff Preferences to Developing Countries and its Implications for Conditionality in GSP Programmes’, in Human Rights & International Trade, ed. T. Cottier et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 463–87.
3 K. Dawar et al., ‘Qualified Market Access’, http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2009/february/tradoc_142341.pdf (accessed January 5, 2014).
4 For details of the Fair Trade system, see A. Walton, ‘What is Fair Trade?’, Third World Quarterly 31, no. 3 (2010): 431–47.
5 The literature on QMA and similar ideas remains tied to the perspectives of different disciplines. One exception is the EC report mentioned above, which brought together knowledge from several disciplines, primarily law and economics. However, the legal and economic analyses were separated components of the report, and it did not make extensive attempts to integrate them, while the philosophical foundations of QMA were not discussed at all. The same is broadly true of another somewhat more encompassing piece of literature: the text by Barry and Reddy mentioned above. Barry's primary research area is philosophy, while Reddy's is economics and their combined work offers an impressive attempt to integrate these two fields. Yet, despite suggesting that their proposal will operate with existing structures and involve the WTO, it does not incorporate an analysis of how their proposals will cohere with existing international economic law or current practice in the area.
6 These reflections are based on the workshop “Justice in Trade? An Inter-Disciplinary Assessment of Qualified Market Access”, which took place at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, on June 10—11, 2013.
7 L. A. Winters, ‘Qualified Market Access through the Eyes of Homo Economicus’, (presented at Justice in Trade? An Inter-Disciplinary Assessment of Qualified Market Access, St. Gallen, June 10–11, 2013).
8 M. Risse, ‘How does the ground-of-justice approach bear on linkage?’, (presented at Justice in Trade? An Inter-Disciplinary Assessment of Qualified Market Access, St. Gallen, June 10–11, 2013); and See also M. Risse, On Global Justice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), especially 261–280.
9 A. James, ‘Market Access and Moral Permissibility’, (presented at Justice in Trade? An Inter-Disciplinary Assessment of Qualified Market Access, St. Gallen, June 10–11, 2013). See also A. James, Fairness in Practice: A Social Contract for a Global Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
10 For an argument based on the issue of labour rights, see Barry and Reddy, International Trade and Labour Standards.
11 Barry and Reddy, International Trade and Labour Standards, 3, emphasis added.
12 Both claims are often made by developing countries in the context of WTO negotiation.
13 This argument is made or accepted by R. D. Anderson and H. Wager, ‘Human Rights, Development, and the WTO: The Case for Intellectual Property and Competition Policy’, Journal of International Economic Law 9, no. 3 (2006): 708–21; and A. O. Sykes, ‘International Trade and Human Rights: An Economic Perspective’, in International Trade and Human Rights: Foundations and Conceptual Issues, ed. F. M. Abbott et al. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 69–92.
14 James, “Market Access and Moral Permissibility”; James, Fairness in Practice. The idea that there are obligations that arise specifically in virtue of the trade relation is also defended in Risse, On Global Justice, 261–80.
15 For an outline of this idea, see D. Miller, ‘Fair Trade: What Does it Mean and Why Does it Matter?’, CSSJ Working Paper Series, SJ013, http://social-justice.politics.ox.ac.uk/materials/SJ013_Miller_Fairtrade.pdf: 6–7 (accessed January 5, 2014). For an advocate of the view, see A. Walton, ‘Justice and Trade: Towards a Holistic Approach’ (forthcoming).
16 The following overview is drawn from L. Nilsson, ‘QMA: State of Play and Challenges Ahead’, (presented at Justice in Trade? An Inter-Disciplinary Assessment of Qualified Market Access, St. Gallen, June 10–11, 2013).
17 James, Fairness in Practice, 320.
18 Winters, ‘Qualified Market Access’ emphasises this point.
19 This section follows K. Dawar, ‘Qualifying Market Access under GATT rules’, (presented at Justice in Trade? An Inter-Disciplinary Assessment of Qualified Market Access, St. Gallen, June 10–11, 2013). For further details see Dawar et al., ‘Qualified Market Access’.
20 Details taken from Nilsson, ‘QMA: State of Play and Challenges Ahead’.
21 C. Portela, ‘Sanctions under the EU's Generalised System of Preferences’, (presented at Justice in Trade? An Inter-Disciplinary Assessment of Qualified Market Access, St. Gallen, June 10–11, 2013). For more detail, see C. Portela and J. Orbie, ‘Sanctions under the EU Generalised System of Preferences and foreign policy: coherence by accident?’, Contemporary Politics 20, no. 1 (2014): 63–76.
22 This summary is loosely based on L. Herzog and A. Walton, ‘QMA Tout Court?’, (presented at Justice in Trade? An Inter-Disciplinary Assessment of Qualified Market Access, St. Gallen, June 10–11, 2013).
23 This example was raised in Winters, ‘Qualified Market Access’. It is also emphasised in J. Bhagwati, Free Trade Today (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 70–3; and A. Najam and N. Robins, ‘Seizing the Future: The South, Sustainable Development, and International Trade’, International Affairs 77, no. 1 (2001): 52.
24 This worry is voiced in J. Stiglitz and A. Charlton, Fair Trade for All: How Trade can Promote Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 176–88. There is also a general worry that sanctions rarely encourage better practice, on which see K. Addo, ‘The Correlation between Labour Standards and International Trade’, Journal of World Trade 36, no. 2 (2002): 298. A more optimistic assessment of the effects of preferential trade agreements in general on human rights practices is provided by E.M. Hafner-Burton, Forced to be Good: Why Trade Agreements Boost Human Rights (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 142–164. Hafner-Burton argues that preferential trade agreements change incentives for perpetrators and may, thus, be more successful, in the long run, than human rights agreements without sanctions. However, given that her book focuses on the introduction of preferential trade agreements with human rights clauses, it is too early for her to judge whether the lack of sanctions in many cases of human rights violations will make this policy instrument less effective in the future.
25 This problem was raised in Winters, ‘Qualified Market Access’.
26 This point is nicely made about the value of holding a specific place for the policy of asylum, rather than collapsing it into a general strategy of aid for refugees, in M. Price, Rethinking Asylum: History, Purpose, and Limits (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
27 Such as K. Sikkink, The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are changing World Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011).
28 On the relevance of social scientific knowledge for (non-ideal) theorizing see L. Herzog, ‘Ideal and Non-Ideal Theory and the Problem of Knowledge’, Journal of Applied Philosophy 29, no. 4 (2012): 271–88.