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This final chapter discusses the subject of transparency, an important GATT/WTO institution aiming to curb uncertainty in trade relations. Transparency is a much repeated concept in the WTO. This chapter reviews how, in the spirit of Article X of GATT, individual WTO members must reveal information about their trade policies. The Trade Policy Review Mechanism, concluded during the Uruguay round, was a significant shift–trading nations no longer had the exclusive initiative to provide information about their policies. Instead, the WTO would be empowered to examine on its own account the trade policies adopted by each member.

There have been several arguments over governments’ attitudes toward mergers in the globalized market, some of which are political in nature. This chapter focuses on strategic trade policy and political economy arguments to illustrate merger policy in the global economy. The strategic trade policy literature mentions that governments’ protectionist attitudes may create national champions by reducing their cost and making them aggressive in the international market, where they can increase their market share and compete well against foreign rivals. However, the authors believe that strategic trade policy arguments may not help us to completely understand the attitudes of governments toward merger policy. They further present a political economy model that throws light on conflicting positions adopted by different nations in the context of mergers.

This chapter explores particular domestic obligations of states in the domain of trade, including obligations and prerogatives to protect their labor force and industries from competition and obligations that arise in the context of dealing with authoritarian regimes. The grounds-of-justice approach dilutes contrasts between domestic and foreign policy. Governments must attend to matters of domestic justice, as well as make appropriate contributions to the global advancement of human rights and to trade justice. There are additional duties of justice and other moral duties that apply to states in domains such as immigration, climate change, or protection of future generations. The state has obligations to protect its labor force and look after its vulnerable citizens. But it also has duties towards people elsewhere. The challenge is to reap gains of cooperation in trade, culture, education, environmental protection, among others, while respecting the world’s many local peculiarities and making sure those gains do not accrue only to a few. The grounds-of-justice approach offers guidance for how to pursue these tasks.

This chapter theorizes the normative role of states in the global order generally and in trade specifically. One challenge for a theory of multiple grounds of justice is that an assignment of duties is not straightforward. A theory of global justice that recognizes multiple grounds requires a differentiated vocabulary to outline obligations for different agents, some designed to fit the role and importance of states for global justice, and some designed for other actors. The chapter develops the constrained agency perspective from Chapter 6 (which started to work with some of that vocabulary) for the role of the state within a pluralistic theory of global justice.