Dostęp do rynku i Światowa Organizacja Handlu (WTO)
In today’s global economy, companies face a range of barriers to doing business in the world’s markets. Many of these obstacles are created by governments to favor domestic companies or are remnants of import substitution economics or other methods of state control. Businesses that can change the regulatory environment to suit their needs will have a real competitive edge in today’s market. While traditional trade barriers in the form of tariffs and other border measures remain, increasingly governments protect their markets by internal measures, which can affect trade and regulatory measures in a way that tends to distort the market.
Our market access team can assess your company’s issues to ensure that trade and other regulatory barriers can be overcome so that your company can increase market share. We employ a multidisciplinary approach to problem solving, recognizing that many specific sector issues require cross-cutting horizontal approaches and that many country-specific problems benefit from an understanding of solutions in other markets. We draw on legal, economic and government relations knowledge to provide solutions for our clients. Our extensive experience in multiple markets and with a variety of issues allows us to deploy the most sophisticated techniques to resolve your problems.
Working with your managers, general counsel and government affairs personnel, we can define:
- The scope of market access problems and how to improve a business environment.
- The regulatory changes occurring in specific markets that could be of interest to you, and what we can do to bring about regulatory change in a favorable way.
We evaluate market access problems and can often effect change to benefit our clients by applying the following in a carefully calibrated policy mix:
- Compliance with a country’s World Trade Organization (WTO) obligations.
- Compliance with a country’s obligations under relevant free-trade agreements.
- Advice to domestic ministries, regulatory bodies and competition agencies to end measures distorting markets.
- Advice to trade and other economic agencies to stimulate inter-governmental negotiations to solve market access problems. We work with trade agencies and ministries around the world and maintain very strong relationships with the US Trade Representative and the US Department of Commerce. Our staff includes a former US Trade Representative’s Chief of Staff, as well as a former Assistant Secretary from the Department of Commerce. We maintain close relationships with the European Commission, in particular the Trade Directorate-General as well as the Competition, External Relations and Internal Markets Directorate Generals.
We advise clients on trade policy issues in the United States, Europe and other markets. We have advised clients on ongoing global bilateral and regional trade negotiations. Our team has guided clients on navigating through trade preference programs such as the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act (CBERA), Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act (CBTPA) and African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). We have assisted clients in presenting their trade problems to the governments in the United States and throughout Europe through the National Trade Estimate, 301, Special 301 and Super 301 processes, as well as the Trade Barrier Regulation process in the European Union.
We also have advised clients on WTO dispute resolution including advising companies and trade associations on ongoing WTO cases. Clients turn to us for assistance with investment protection measures including bilateral investment treaties (BITs) dispute resolution as well as BIT negotiations with new US BIT partners.
To help our clients meet their goals, we employ both our legal team as well as our public advocacy professionals in Squire Sanders Public Advocacy. Together Squire Sanders and Squire Sanders Public Advocacy offer a unique method of deploying our knowledge, access and strategic planning to implement solutions for clients.
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