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Radio frequency identification (RFID) provides a useful tool for the prescreening or detection of goods and containers moving across the border and for controlling the trade of illicit materials and preventing or mitigating the effects of terrorism. Although anti-terrorism measures are important in today’s dangerous world, RFID tools, if misused, may violate the WTO trade rules. Whenever goods or container control measures using RFID are proposed, their contents, objectives, and rationale must be published, and WTO members must be notified through the WTO Secretariat and allowed to make comments. WTO members should not take such measures that are designed or applied in a discriminatory manner and those measures must be adopted only under necessary situations and to the extent necessary. These measures must reduce the incidence and complexity of import and export formalities, and there should not be substantial penalties for minor breaches of the requirements under the measures. If the measures require country-of-origin information in RFID tags, they must apply in the same way to like products, and they must not cause unnecessary inconveniences or unreasonable cost. If the measures deal with containers in international transit, they must be reasonable, consider the conditions of the traffic, and guarantee transit through the most convenient routes for international transit.

A container control measure designed to restrict the flow of fissionable materials or their derivative materials, traffic in arms, ammunition, and implements of war, or traffic in military supply goods and materials may be justified, even if it violates some of the GATT rules. In addition, a measure established in time of war or other emergency in international relations or based on the United Nations Charter and designed to maintain international peace and security can also be justified. As a last resort, WTO members may request a waiver from GATT and TBT Agreement obligations for container control measures that include RFID.

Superpowers must be careful not to use RFID to practice power politics and create regulations to deal with national security and anti-terrorism issues that do not conform to international law. The key question is how to maintain a balance between the two inalienable values of free trade and national security in this era of globalization, harmonization, and terrorism .

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chains have become important policy tools to ensure the security and resilience of regional trading blocs of major economies. The US government’s focus on supply chains for selected strategic industries and the EU Commission’s renewed efforts to strengthen its supply chains using ‘sustainability standards’ coincides with the global trend in the shift towards digital and low-carbon economies. Furthermore, the rising tensions between the US and China, with no signs of reconciliation over key issues of contention, have emphasized the need for more credibility and trust in global supply chains. However, such policies also have the potential to serve as new barriers to participation in supply chains by less-developed economies which are not yet prepared to meet the high-level sustainability criteria which aim for higher protection of the environment and labor rights. There also seems to be an apparent shift in paradigm supporting the interventionist role of government that emphasize the need for more discretion for policy objectives that pursue societal and democratic values, not to mention national security interests. The current rules of international trade, however, do not sufficiently address these new issues and need to be realigned in order to meet the new demands. The current ‘rules of the game’ need to be reinforced in order to accommodate the rising need of countries for increased consideration of issues of sustainability and competitiveness.

The Korea-China-Japan Investment Promotion, Facilitation and Protection Agreement is the first treaty in the economic field that binds the three Northeast Asian countries together under a single legal instrument. The existence of effective dispute-settlement procedures under the treaty will contribute to the creation of a favourable investment climate in the host country. Nevertheless, there have been fears about frivolous or vexatious claims that could inhibit legitimate regulatory actions by governments. How to compose an investment chapter of the Korea-China-Japan FTA that is being negotiated is a pressing demand for all in the region. Any pertinent answers to such a quest require a thorough comparison of the benefits and drawbacks of any development of relevant rules and governance. In the end, a quest for better international investment governance in Northeast Asia in the future requires sound evaluation of lessons from the past and present.

This paper examines the role of government procurement as a social policy mechanism within a multilateral open trading system. Government regulations globally are being transformed to foster more responsible business conduct in multinational enterprises (MNEs). Yet, concern that sustainability may present a discriminatory barrier to trade has stalled the progress of sustainable public procurement (SPP) at the international level, raising questions regarding the role and scope of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) to align taxpayer-funded contracts with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals.

With a focus on social sustainability, this paper reviews the grey and academic literature to assess the changing landscape of public procurement policy and supply chain legislation in high-income countries.

Frontrunner nations are adopting a mandatory approach to sustainable public procurement and due diligence legislation is elevating supply chain risk from reputational damage to legal liability. While technological innovation and the clean, green production of manufactured goods dominates the sustainable public procurement literature, the social aspects of sustainability poverty, inequality and human rights remain underrepresented.

The scope of this paper is limited to the examination of government procurement covered by the WTO-GPA (2012). Smaller value contracts, under the WTO-GPA thresholds and the category of defence are beyond the scope of the paper.

The paper focusses on the underserved topic of social sustainability in business-to-government (B2G) – business to government – supply chains arguing that for responsible business conduct to become a competitive advantage, it must be more meaningfully rewarded on the demand-side of all taxpayer-funded contracts in organisation for economic co-operation and development countries. The paper introduces the idea of priceless procurement as a mechanism to build system capacity in the evaluation of non-financial sustainability objectives.

To build the capacity to stimulate competition based on social and environmental policy objectives, the paper introduces the concept of priceless procurement in B2G contracts.

This paper aims at exploring the interactions between Japan's export curbs against Korea, dubbed as “weaponized interdependence,” and Korea's decoupling from Japan' phenomenon in response. Thereby, it sheds light on the characteristics of the semiconductor industry, where the two economies' effective division of labor takes place. In addition, it attempts to typology the “decoupling from Japan” into two types. Furthermore, it deals with the political-economic implications of bilateral trade disputes and projects in the future.

This paper segregates the economic concept of “decoupling” into “decoupling from Japan” and “decoupling from Japanese firms” to better analyze the related phenomenon that occurred in Korea in response to the Japanese government's export restrictions in 2019. Along with it, the paper attempts to observe the trade dispute between Korea-Japan from a political-economic point of view.

The main findings are: First, Korea's decoupling from Japan' does not necessarily mean “decoupling from Japanese firms”. When Korean firms had to decouple from Japan due to non-economic factors, some has circumvented the decoupling to maintain economic ties with Japanese firms in the market, stemming from long-term transaction relationships in the semiconductor industry. Second, the two countries were confronted in a modest manner, even though they seemed to be fighting like a fierce tit-for-tat chicken game as those economies are interdependent with one another. Hence, both put effort to avoid sober damages or disruptive results on two economies and the global semiconductor supply chain.

The originality of this paper is to typologize the characteristics of “decoupling from Japan” in Korea by segregating it into two types of decoupling. On the other hand, other previous studies appeal to focus on the decoupling phenomenon per se and are interested in its potential for success.

This editorial proposes three fundamental issues in the international economic field evoked by the US-China trade war. The first is the intensifying conflict between protectionism measures and the coherence with relevant global trade rules. The second is decoupling between the US and China and subsequent evolution in the global production network. The third is the digression in the trade flow between the US and China and the resulting change in innovative capabilities and manufacturing competitiveness among major industrial countries. This editorial also offers the long-term perspective of the current global trade war and how the world encounters repercussion of openness and protectionism as well as times of prosperity and uncertainty.

Despite being a viable source of funds, African sovereign bond markets are relatively underexplored. The empirical literature fails to consider the impact of exclusively macroeconomic factors and the volatile contexts in which African markets operate. The purpose of this paper is to fill the vacuum by proposing a context-sensitive theoretical framework. The study targets, specifically, macroeconomic factors and assesses the extent to which they affect bond market development.

Using panel data on sovereign bond markets from 26 African economies, the study extends previous methodologies used in similar studies by accounting for downside risk in a generalized method of moments (GMM) framework and employing tighter robustness measures.

This study finds that inflation, domestic debt, external debt, GDP at PPP, fiscal balance and exports are important macroeconomic drivers of sovereign bond market development in African emerging economies.

While GMM estimation is beneficial in the presence of endogeneity between the dependent variables that are instrumented with lagged independent variables, it guarantees consistency but, not unbiased estimations.

Market-oriented government funding with well-defined debt management strategies must be implemented to support the development of sovereign bond markets. External debt must be set at a sustainable level, and government should be dedicated to the confirmation of this. Furthermore, inflation rates must be kept low and stable.

If policymakers are to take this study seriously, bond markets may begin to be viable sources of funds for African emerging economies.

This study introduces a methodology for measuring bond market development that considers the systemic volatility in emerging markets and proposes a theoretical framework for African emerging economies. In addition, the authors identify a new macroeconomic determinant of bond market development in the region.

A deteriorating security situation and an increased need for defence equipment calls for new forms of collaboration between Armed Forces and the defence industry. This paper aims to investigate the ways in which the accelerating demand for increased security of supply of equipment and supplies to the Armed Forces requires adaptability in the procurement process that is governed by laws on public procurement (PP).

This paper is based on a review of current literature as well as empirical data obtained through interviews with representatives from the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration and the Swedish defence industry.

Collaboration with the globalized defence industry requires new approaches, where the PP rules make procurement of a safe supply of defence equipment difficult.

The study's empirical data and findings are based on the Swedish context. In order to draw more general conclusions in a defence context, the study should be expanded to cover more nations.

The findings will enable the defence industry and the procurement authorizations to better understand the requirements of Armed Forces, and how to cooperate under applicable legal and regulatory requirements.

The paper extends the extant body of academic knowledge of the security of supply into the defence sector. It serves as a first step towards articulating a call for new approaches to collaboration in defence supply chains.