The Interfacing Of The National And International Orders

The establishment of the World Trade Organization revived that the old disputes of where the demarcation between the international and national domains lies and how they should interface. The IMF provided an early example of this tension, but the WTO has escalated the debate. The obligations and rules of the trade organization, and indeed the new international trade and international law, on the reasoning that some domestic policies have international consequences, step into domains of policy herewith squarely in the national domains. Examples are to be found in agriculture subsidies and industrial policies, both of which violate the new WTO rules. To be sure, the main purpose of industrial policies is to give some extra impulse to economic development, and of agricultural policies to impart balance to the environment and to preserve certain modes of traditions and living. In most of the countries, segments of society should not accept this encroachment upon the national sphere and place greater value on the accomplishment of the goals in the national domains than on the efficacy and rules of the international system. Moreover, a certain historical duplicity is assessed upon the advocates of liberal trade in that many of them, e.g. Japan, the United Nations, European countries and South Korea, to cite some examples, have in the past practiced and benefited from these same currently forbidden policies. Governments accept them by the pressures of need and desire than by any conviction about their merits. It is clear that there are no ready or agreed criteria as to where the demarcation lines should be, since what might be required by international concerns is sometimes of a predominantly domestic nature and what might be done domestically could have large international implications. Nor could one make an easy trade- off between the national interest and those of the international order because the national benefits are felt directly while the international ones are often felt indirectly.