4 - Beyond the WTO: Erosion of the Export Credit Arrangement

Summary

This chapter analyzes China’s impact on the global governance of export credit. For decades, the OECD Arrangement has been held up as a successful example of liberal trade governance, with its system of disciplines proving highly effective in preventing a destructive, competitive spiral of state subsidization via export credit. I show, however, that the rise of China has profoundly altered the landscape of export credit and disrupted its governance arrangements. China has emerged as the world’s largest provider of export credit, but China has refused to join the Arrangement and it has persistently thwarted efforts to negotiate a new set of international rules. China has little incentive to agree to disciplines on its use of export credit, which plays a central role in its development strategy. Despite considerable US pressure, China has refused to capitulate and subject itself to international disciplines that it views as fundamentally against its interests. China has shown that it has sufficient power to stand up to the US in defending its development interests. Yet the result, I argue, is that China’s rise is undermining the liberal regime for governing export credit by eroding the efficacy of existing disciplines and blocking efforts to construct new ones.