Bullying in International Trade and Investment Relations or Economic Statecraft

Event Description

This presentation is based on research findings made in the first phase of the project funded by the Farris Research Fund and it focuses on the increasing application of economic coercion measures by politically and economically powerful states in the 21st century. Traditionally, the use of economic coercion has been considered as a form of economic statecraft. While international organizations at the multilateral and plurilateral levels have raised concerns about the destabilizing effects of economic coercion on the security and functioning of the international legal order and the multilateral trade system, they have provided no effective protection to states targeted by such measures. There are no international instruments of collective action against economic coercion and the existing international law remedies and countermeasures do not provide rapid relief to individual states against coercive trade and investment measures. This presentation analyzes legislative responses of the European Union and Canada to economic coercion and their actions before the World Trade Organization aimed at resisting coercive trade measures imposed by China on the EU and Canadian imports to China.

Speaker

Dr. Ljiljana Biuković is a Professor in the Allard School of Law. She teaches Contract Law, European Union Law, and International Trade Law. Her research interests are in the areas of international economic law and European Union integration. She publishes regularly on topics of legal transplantation of international norms and standards by national governments, the impact of regionalism on multilateral trade negotiations, mega-regional trade and investment agreements, and the development of European Union. She acted as a co-investigator in the Major Collaborative Research Initiative research project on Coordinated Compliance of International Trade Law and Human Rights funded by SSHRC from 2011 to 2018. Her work focused on the interaction between international trade rules and local human rights norms and practices in the context of performance of international trade agreements and cooperation among developing countries. At present, Dr. Biuković examines issues on collective memories and international law as a part of a new research project funded by Franklin Lew Innovation Fund.