미국과 EU의 지리경제학적 정책에 대한 국제통상법에 따른 분석: 중국에 대한 정책을 중심으로

Abstract

On August 9, 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act, which offers subsidies for semiconductor manufacturing in the United States to domestic and some foreign companies. As a component of its policy to attain strategic autonomy, the EU’s 2020 industrial strategy states that EU will look into reducing dependence on others for things we need the most. By resorting to such actions, governments in developed countries intervene in the economic domain to spur domestic production, diversify supply chains, and preserve domestic capabilities from being acquired by certain foreign actors, Chinese actors in particular. This does not necessarily imply a trade-restrictive environment but instead one of trade-distortion where governments intervene to disadvantage a strategic competitor while favoring like-minded economies. While the U.S. administration proclaims that tools such as ally and friend-shoring are part of a strategy to strengthen supply chain resilience, EU advocates that in areas of common dependencies with its partners, the EU may choose to pool resources and build stronger and more diverse alternative supply chains with our closest allies and partners. The growing number of measures of geoeconomic orientation by the U.S. and the EU points to a solid trend where discrimination, particularly to the detriment of China, is often present. The embrace of geoeconomic policies by the major global traders might impact discussions on both substantive trade rules and institutional aspects of the WTO reform. The consolidation of strategic competition exposes the limits of trade law in two ways: first, it challenges the existing substantive trade rules, including rules on non-discrimination, the general and security exceptions and subsidies, etc; second, given the dysfunctional status of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism, it also puts pressure on the institutional aspects of the trade regime, which is unable to offer multilateral remedies to grievances caused by the adoption of geoeconomic measures. Whether the resort to geoeconomic policies will be able to redesign global supply chains remains to be seen. However, there is no doubt the trade regime is undergoing a period of experimentalism marked, by pressure being offered by the unilateral or minilateral implementation of geoeconomic policies. With structural changes, such as geoeconomic policies of major economies, reshaping the global economy, it is unrealistic to expect that the WTO framework or any other trade regime will continue to function in the same way as in previous decades. The search for realistic solutions to preserve some level of rule of law in trade relations requires understanding where it is possible to manage the test to which geoeconomic policies subject the existing trade rules. In addition, it is important to seek stability in the global economy through cooperation and dialogue among countries, and the specific criteria will be more clearly defined through accumulated experience.