Commercial Treaties

I

Introduction

Commercial Treaties, formal agreements concluded between states for the purpose of establishing mutual rights to, and regulating conditions of, trade and navigation in the territories of the signatories. Provisions often cover the rights of nationals of one party to reside in the territory of the other and to acquire and hold property there; consular jurisdiction; rights of asylum in time of war; fishing rights; regulation of free ports; and conditions governing both the collection of debts due to a foreign trader and the taxation of foreign investors.

II

Conditions of Treaties

Present-day commercial treaties are ratified according to the constitutional procedures of the participating parties. The treaties may be terminated unilaterally on notice of six months or a year. Termination, however, may also occur by expiration of the time period during which the treaty is in force; by negotiation of another treaty on the same subject by the same parties; or by a change in the political status of a signatory, as by absorption by, or federation with, another state. The outbreak of war, however, is currently the occasion of suspension, rather than termination, of the operation of commercial treaties. Treaties of peace often stipulate whether such agreements shall be continued in force or terminated. If a dispute arising among signatories over the interpretation of commercial treaties cannot be settled by direct negotiation, it is under international law a matter for international adjudication. Such disputes must be submitted to the International Court of Justice if the signatories have mutually accepted the jurisdiction of that court in advance.

III

Trade Agreements

In addition to formal agreements between modern states having important economic ties with each other, less formal and durable agreements relate to such matters as tariff rates, navigation dues, customs formalities, air-transport clearance arrangements, quantity restrictions on trade in specific commodities, regulation of commercial, financial, transport, and communication facilities, standards of commercial law and maritime law, commercial arbitration, patents, trademarks, and copyright.

Reciprocal trade agreements characteristically provide that import duties on products originating in the signatory countries be lower than the duties on the same classes of articles imported from other nations. Although tending to discriminate against other countries, such special arrangements can be justified when political, economic, and geographical ties are particularly close, as in the Commonwealth of Nations or among Latin American countries. The advantages thus obtained are offset in part through operation of the most-favoured-nation clause.

IV

Most-Favoured-Nation Clause

The most-favoured-nation clause stipulates that a nation will extend to other signatories treatment comparable to that accorded to any other nation with which it has, or may have in the future, a commercial treaty. Under such a clause, all existing rights and privileges granted to other nations become immediately applicable to the signatory nations, and all rights and privileges granted to other nations in later treaties become applicable to the parties with the most-favoured-nation agreement as soon as those treaties take effect. The usual form of the clause is bilateral, that is, involving two nations in a reciprocal agreement. A most-favoured-nation clause may be tendered unilaterally, however, in response to extraordinary economic or political pressure. The clause may be either unconditional, that is, applicable to all subjects omitted from the negotiations as well as to those included; or conditional, that is, limited to particular items or areas of trade. The basis for restriction of the applicability of the clause is the theory, once widely held, that concessions granted to one nation in return for special advantages should not be granted to other nations without similar considerations.