Financial Services Trade after the Crisis: Policy and Legal Conjectures

The financial crisis of 2008-09 has cast doubt on the utility and effectiveness of the General Agreement on Trade in Services and of services trade law more broadly in providing instruments that are able to deal adequately with the trade-related regulatory fallout from the financial crisis and the potentially distortive measures taken to mitigate its effects. In many ways, the financial crisis has confirmed the impression of the minimal relevance of the current multilateral legal framework regulating trade in services for the prevention and management of financial crises. The crisis and the regulatory reforms that are enacted in its wake offer a propitious opportunity for revisiting the substance of services trade regulation. This should be done with a view to strengthening services trade law to better manage the downside risks of financial protectionism and offer a more credible platform for confronting the trade and investment disputes whose numbers this article considers likely to rise in the coming years.