Giganters Kamp - en undersökning av konfliktlösning och förhandling i handelskonflikter
NegotiationsTrade conflictUSEUProtectionismPolitical and administrative sciencesStatsvetenskapFörvaltningskunskapLaw and Political Science
This paper is an attempt to distinguish the specifics of the conflict resolution process and the negotiations during trade conflicts. First of all, this kind of conflict almost always contains some kind of protectionism which doesn?t make sense economically. Imposing trade-barriers decrease the overall welfare of your own nation and the only winner is the protected sector. These policies can be introduced since the political pressure from threatened industries is usually much stronger than the pressure from the consumers who will bear the burden of protectionism. The negotiations in economic conflicts are also constrained by the rules of the WTO, which are negotiated multilaterally and therefore not possible for the negotiators in a certain trade conflict to change. The paper also includes a presentation of five different cases of trade conflict between the US and the EU. They all show different aspects of protectionism and the boundaries that the negotiations are conducted within. They also show that with the current WTO dispute settlement system only large, powerful economies can hope to initiate and win a trade-war.