This article takes issue with the assumption the policy research literature, specifically that produced by the World Trade Organization (WTO), makes about the role of law as one which is mainly reactive to an exogenous economic reality, that of value chain trade. It argues instead that law has played a much more active role, shaping the so-called fragmentation and fractionalization of production that has led to the proliferation of Global Value Chains (GVCs). By tracing the evolution of post/colonial international economic law, the article shows how trade and investment provisions in particular have been (and still are) an important terrain over which the relationship between companies and states is articulated, with important consequences for all actors involved in GVCs. If this active role is acknowledged then law can be seen not only as contributing, together with other market-making mechanisms, to the making of those economic processes it is assumed to only respond, but also as a means through which these processes can be shaped otherwise.
