Susan Ariel Aaronson

Seeping in Slowly: How Human Rights Concerns are Penetrating the WTO

This article uses the day to day operations of the WTO (trade negotiations, trade waivers, acessions, trade policy reviews) to discuss how human rights issues are seeping into the work of the WTO. The author also discusses how the WTO may promote particular human rights such as public participation, property rights, and due process rights.

How The Europeans Got a Head Start on Policies to Promote Global Corporate Responsibility

Abstract This article considers the debate over public policies to promote global corporate responsibility in the United States and in Europe. The debate and the response of policymakers is compared along with an explanation of how Europeans are developing a policy response encouraging corporate social responsibility. Finally, recommendations are made for U.S. policymakers based on encouraging ethical behavior around the world.

How China's Employment Problems Became Trade Problems

This article focuses on the potential trade spillovers of Chinese policies to maintain employment and discusses how nations might work collaboratively at the WTO to address this problem. Chinese leaders are determined to maintain employment and have long ignored Chinese employment laws (as well as international law) that could empower workers. Chinese leaders have not made sufficient effort to either educate workers and managers about their rights and responsibilities under the law (demand side of the law) or to educate policymakers throughout China as to their enforcement obligations under the law (supply side). The failure to enforce these laws has distorted trade. Norms regarding the rule of law underpin the GATT/WTO but they are implicit. China became the first (but not only) nation to have explicit rule of law obligations. China was “required to enforce the rule of law throughout all of its territories.�? I suggest a way in which WTO members can address this problem and at the same time provide incentives to China to improve its rule of law.

What might have been and could still be: the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s potential to encourage an open internet and digital rights

ABSTRACTHerein I asses the implications for the Internet, digital rights, and digital trade of US abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP. I focus on how the agreement attempts to regulate issues at the intersection of cross-border information flows and human rights. I focus on four chapters of the TPP. I show that these chapters may help internet users and policy-makers advance internet openness and make it harder for officials to restrict information flows but only in those cases where doing so would have a trade impact. TPP also contains transparency requirements that could bring much needed sunshine, due process, and increased political participation to trade (and internet related) policy-making in TPP countries such as Malaysia.However, TPP’s ability to limit censorship and filtering is limited. First, not all information flows are cross-border and hence subject to trade rules. Second, these agreements provide clear exceptions that allow governments to restrict information flows when they...

Why Trade Agreements are not Setting Information Free: The Lost History and Reinvigorated Debate over Cross-Border Data Flows, Human Rights and National Security

This article examines how the United States and the European Union (the EU) use trade agreements to both advance and restrict the free flow of information, and to promote Internet freedom. This issue is not new: in the 1980s, with the advent of faster computers, software and satellites, officials from some states including the US and Japans wanted to include language governing the free flow of information in trade agreements. As of July 2014, government officials are negotiating cross-border data flows in three very different trade agreements. Officials and citizens from many nations worry about their ability to control or limit information flows as well as their dependence on US companies to provide web services (which must comply with US rules on privacy and national security). In June 2013, after media outlets publicized the revelations of former US National Security Agency (NSA) analyst Edward Snowden, policymakers and citizens around the world became concerned about provisions to promote the free flow of information (Davies: 2014). They recognized that the NSA (and other surveillance agencies) did not fully respect digital rights, including national privacy rules and had restricted the free flow of information with their surveillance activities. Meanwhile, several EU countries and other states tried to use the Snowden revelations to wrest greater market share from US internet giants (Chander and Le: 2014; US ITC: 2013; Kommerskollegium 2014). Many governments including Brazil, India, Turkey China, and Germany, adopted strategies that restricted rather than enhanced the free flow of information, and further fragmented the Internet (Maxwell and Wolf: 2012; Chander and Le: 2014). Without deliberate intent, the US and EU efforts to set information free through trade liberalization may be making it less free.

Putting the Blame on Governments: Why Firms and Governments have Failed to Advance the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights

Some 67 years after the Holocaust, Guillaume Pepy, the chairman of Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer francais (SNCF), the French national railway company, apologized for transporting 76,000 people to Nazi death camps during World War II. Pepy acknowledged that his firm’s failure to respect human rights in the past was creating business risks in the present, and he feared that US state legislators would block the company from competing for high-speed rail contracts (de la Baume 2011).

Trade Imbalance: The Struggle to Weigh Human Rights Concerns in Trade Policymaking: Conclusion: How to Right the Trade Imbalance

Foreword Preface and acknowledgments 1. Introduction 2. The World Trade Organization and human rights 3. South Africa 4. Brazil 5. European Union 6. United States 7. Conclusion and recommendations Appendix: interviews.