Global Market Access & International Trade Agreements
Companies may fail in markets, not because of a lack of competitiveness or efficiency, but rather because there are laws, regulations or other practices that prevent them succeeding. Our market access team brings to bear a range of policy tools to eliminate such obstacles. Businesses that can modify the regulatory environment to promote their competitive needs will have a real market edge in today’s worldwide economy.
An Experienced Team
While trade liberalization has occurred at the multilateral level through the efforts of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to reduce trade barriers, and at the regional level through regional and bilateral trade agreements, domestic barriers and anticompetitive practices continue to plague trade relationships.
Our team has extensive experience solving global market access issues including working with the inter-agency process in countries adversely affected by trade barriers, assisting trade ministries and competition agencies to bring out consumer-based arguments regarding removal of trade barriers and market distortions and engaging competition agencies in competition advocacy. To learn more about our Global Market Access and International Trade Agreements team, read our War Stories
Market Access Issues
Our team’s experience includes:
- Customs and Customs Valuation
- EU Customs Duty Recovery
- EU Duty Suspension
- Distribution Issues
- Intellectual Property Enforcement and Ensuring Compliance With WTO Trade-Related Intellectual Property Agreement (TRIPs)
- The Interface of Postal Services, Telecoms, Trade and Competition
- Media Regulation
- State Aid in the European Union
- Export Bans and Export Restriction
- Government Procurement
- Standards and Technical Barriers to Trade
- Buy Local Policies
- Anticompetitive Market Distortions
- Trade and Agriculture
- WTO Arbitration Matters
Case Studies
UOP is a division of processed technology and catalysts for use in the petrochemical industry. Its major competitor is the France-based company Axens. For many years the latter has been successful in underbidding UOP for some significant tendered bus...
We assisted a US-based multinational company which was importing chemical precursors made in their United States and Asia plants for use in their production sites in the UK and Germany, to retroactively adjust their import declarations for the previo...
A subsidiary of our client, Quaker Chemical Corp., makes a type of adhesive that is incorporated into filters used in processing consumable liquids like milk. Because the adhesive comes in contact with food products, it needed to be approved by the F...
The US Department of Transportation required approval for a code share arrangement between our client, the TACA Group airlines, a group of five Central American airlines, and American Airlines, which helped open up the United States air transportatio...
Arcelor sought to raise market share in United States, where market was dominated by AK Steel for a steel product. We employed the use of antitrust and patent proceedings to increase Arcelor’s share by preventing anti-competitive practices by competi...
The Japanese government decided to privatize its postal service. This was a very controversial measure and resulted in Prime Minister Koizumi having to call a general election on the issue, when the Upper House of the Diet initially rejected the refo...
We acted for a major producer of alcoholic beverages whose trademarks were being violated by a local producer. As well as ensuring a Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) compliant-piece of legislation, we obtained the first e...
The Brazilian government is in the process of implementing new media regulations, as well as a review of the mass communication law. Our client, a prominent player in the Internet sector, is concerned about draft regulations that would apply local co...
The three major producers of emulsion fuels, diesel fuel with high water content, encountered significant difficulties in marketing their product within the EU. The problem stemmed from the fact that (1) there was no technical standard for such fuels...