Is it Possible to Harmonise International Trade?

1988 Words4 Pages

For many years, there have been several attempts in the harmonisation of international trade. Unfortunately, sales of international goods are very complex and this leads to great difficult in unifying trade law. People have tried to create universal laws to mend shipping issues, seller to buyer relationships and fraud, however, there is still no global international trade law. So far, with every attempt, it becomes clearer that nations have conflicting ideologies or viewpoints and hinders the progression of global harmonisation of international trade. The idea of perfectly harmonising international trade is not possible because countries act to benefit their self-interests and have varying interpretations of law.
The Hague-Visby Rules, Hamburg Rules and Rotterdam Rules are all international trade laws which attempted to harmonise trade law regarding carriers. However, not all countries have parted from their laws and adopt the Rotterdam Rules, the most modern of the three provisions. The Hague-Visby Rules are heavily criticised because of the laws included seem to heavily favour cargo owners and the Hamburg rules were introduced to replace the 1924 Hague Rules and the 1968 Hague-Visby Rules (Wanigasekera and Creasy, n.d., p. 2, 4). The Hamburg Rules and the Hague-Visby Rules are very different from each other in regards of what goods are covered and time length to bring a claim. According to Hague-Visby Rule article 1(c), “'Goods' includes goods, wares, merchandise, and articles of every kind whatsoever except live animals” and deck cargo (Jus.uio.no, 2014). The Hamburg Rules accepts live animals and deck cargo within their provisions as goods covered under Article 1(5) and Article 9 (United Nations Convention on the Car...

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