International Economic Law in the ‘Asian Century’

Abstract

The current non-compliance with United Nations (UN) and World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements protecting transnational public goods, military aggression among WTO members, violent suppression of human and democratic rights, global health pandemics, climate change, ocean pollution, overfishing, and other biodiversity losses reflects ‘governance failures’ (e.g. to limit ‘market failures’) and ‘constitutional failures’ (e.g. to protect human and democratic rights and the sustainable development goals). The geopolitical rivalries among totalitarian governments and democracies render constitutional UN and WTO reforms unlikely. They entail ‘regulatory competition’ (e.g. among neoliberalism, state capitalism, and ordo-liberal constitutionalism) and plurilateral responses aimed at limiting abuses of power (like collective countermeasures against Russia’s illegal wars and war crimes) and at protecting transnational public goods (like plurilateral ‘climate change mitigation clubs’, appeal arbitration among WTO members, regional human rights and security agreements). The power politics disrupting the UN and WTO legal systems is bound to promote regionalization of economic law, re-globalization of supply chains, and geopolitical rivalries resulting from conflicting value priorities and neglect for the human rights underlying the sustainable development goals.