LAWS 665 - Resource List (Spring 2023)

General Resources

USTR:  Office of the United States Trade Representative:  free trade agreements, bilateral investment treaties, and more.  “Special 301” reports (on the global state of intellectual property rights) going back to 1989.

World Trade Organization:  pdf documents of the WTO.  Coverage begins in 1995; GATT collection is a work in progress and is not complete.  Site also includes statistical data portal. Some content is restricted to members only but most information is public access.  Here is a list of WTO databases, what the databases contain, how they access, whether they are public or for WTO members only.  The entries below are some of the most popular, but the archive is immense.

GATT:  The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) covers international trade in goods. The workings of the GATT agreement are the responsibility of the Council for Trade in Goods (Goods Council) which is made up of representatives from all WTO member countries.

GATS:  The General Agreement on Trade in Services is the first and only set of multilateral rules and commitments covering Government measures which affect trade in services. It has two parts—the framework agreement containing the rules, and the national schedules of commitments in which each Member specifies the degree of access it is prepared to guarantee for foreign service suppliers.

Regional Trade Agreements:  WTO’s RTA gateway, offering documents search feature and background information.  Find links to a country’s free trade agreements here.

Dispute Settlement:  Chronological listing of disputes cases

Investment:  Three main areas of work in the WTO on trade and investment

United Nations:  Treaties, international agreements, and associated documents.  Search template for the UN’s Official Documents System (ODS) accessed through Documents page.

Other Sources of Free Trade Agreements

U.S. Free Trade Agreements:  The U.S. is currently involved in 14 FTAs with 20 different countries.  Page includes links to full text of agreements.

TRALAC (Trade Law Centre):  legal texts and policy documents of the African Continental Free Trade Area; “Trade Data Analysis” section offers trade & tariff profiles on individual countries

Free Trade Agreements of the EU: Rules of origin

Asian Development Bank:  Portal for free-trade agreements

Bilateral Free Trade Agreements: Wikipedia list of bilateral trade agreements.  Does not link to original documents but good starting point to find out which countries are involved in FTAs with which other countries.

Investment Treaties/Agreements

U.S. Trade Representative’s Office:  overview of U.S. bilateral investment treaties, links to treaties currently in force.

U.N.’s International Investment Agreements Navigator: find bilateral investment treaties and treaties with investment provisions.

World Bank:  The World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes provides a listing of bilateral investment treaties.  Other types of investment treaties (multilateral, free trade agreements with investment provisions) are listed separately.

Interdisciplinary (non-law) Journal Articles

Jstor:  archive of scholarly articles from numerous fields of study.  Access through the law library’s electronic resource link or from Thomas Cooper’s database page.

Subject-Specific Resources

Thomas Cooper research guide to international business & statistics – free web resources, Cooper databases for international business, brief instructions on navigating the databases

Legal Resources

Hein Online:  Scholarly archive of pdf documents; contains databases for international law and international treaties and agreements, as well as UN documents collection.  Access through the law library’s electronic resource link or from Thomas Cooper’s database page.  Suggested search:  from Catalog tab at top of screen, enter: Free Trade Agreement.  Results will pertain mostly to US agreements with other countries, but many entries contain links to original documents, hearings, and other background materials.

Bloomberg Law:  International Trade Practice Center

Lexis: International Trade Law Practice Area

American Society of International Law (ASIL):  Good collection of general information; some access restricted to members. Topics section offers a page on International Economic Law; contains links to agreements and reports.

Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports:  Search for “international trade” in the search box on the homepage.  Results filtered on the left-hand sidebar.

House of Representatives:  Get hearings on various U.S. trade issues.  From search bar in upper right of homepage, type (example): hearing trade China (works with other keywords or countries, depending on your interest)

Proquest Congressional:  Access through the law library’s electronic resource link. Access to congressional documents and activity, including bills, committee reports, transcripts of testimony from congressional hearings, and debates and statements from members of Congress. Full-text information can be retrieved using search terms or document numbers.

Think Tanks

Brookings Institute: “The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC. Our mission is to conduct in-depth research that leads to new ideas for solving problems facing society at the local, national and global level.”  Website offers links for global development and international affairs.

Center for Strategic and International Studies: “The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is a bipartisan, nonprofit policy research organization dedicated to advancing practical ideas to address the world’s greatest challenges.”

American Enterprise Institute: “The American Enterprise Institute is a public policy think tank dedicated to defending human dignity, expanding human potential, and building a freer and safer world.”

The Cato Institute: “The Cato Institute is a public policy research organization — a think tank — dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace. Its scholars and analysts conduct independent, nonpartisan research on a wide range of policy issues.”  Has a trade policy page.

Peterson Institute for International Economics: “The Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) is an independent nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to strengthening prosperity and human welfare in the global economy through expert analysis and practical policy solutions.”   Offers research, blogs, news, and a page focusing on the U.S.-China trade war.

Current U.S.-China Trade Issues

ProQuest Congressional:  Most productive search strategy to get hearings and other Congressional materials on U.S. trade issues with China:  The ProQuest Congressional homepage will likely default to “Congressional Publications.”  Accept this default and use the link for the “Advanced” search.  In the search box in the upper middle of the screen, type: trade & China.  Use the button to “Limit by Date.”  From the “All Available Dates” pulldown, choose “date is after” and fill in January 1, 2018.

Get Executive Orders and Presidential documents from Westlaw or Lexis.  Lexis has a database for executive orders within the Federal Materials tab.  To find executive orders in Westlaw, follow this search path:  Westlaw > Federal Materials > Federal Administrative Decisions & Guidence > Executive Office of the President > Presidential Documents.  Productive search query: trade & china (and restrict the date to after January 1, 2018).

Bibliographies

Bibliographies, although they become outdated fairly quickly, are good starting points to use in finding resources.  Bibliographies will give you listings of resources on a given topic.  If they have become outdated, you can check the catalog for more current editions of the resources listed.  You can search for them in the USC Libraries catalog.  In the search bar at the top of the page, type:  bibliography international trade.  Restrict the date if you want the most current entries.

Many of these resources are online, and most of the physical volumes will be located outside of the law library.  We share our new catalog system with the entire borrowing consortium of SC academic libraries, so to filter results by library use the “Library” filter on the left-hand sidebar of your catalog results.

Example:
Taste, Trade and Technology: The Development of the International Meat Industry since 1840. By Richard Perren. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. xi + 285 pp. Tables, bibliography, notes, index.
Watts, Sydney
Business history review, 2008, Vol.82 (1), p.181-184 (online resource)
If you don’t find anything you like in the catalog, a Google search will also turn up bibliographies.  Suggested search:  bibliography international trade law

Examples:
Oxford Bibliography on Trade Law

University of British Columbia: Law - WTO/GATT & International Trade Law