IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/eclchp/978-981-95-6996-0_19.html

Forging Trade Rules in the Age of AI: The Case for Special Labor Safeguards

In: Geopolitical Risks and Geoeconomics in International Economic Law

Author

Listed:
  • Tsai-fang Chen

    (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University)

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to reshape global labor markets, generating structural displacement across sectors through trade in AI-enabled goods and services. This chapter argues that the WTO’s current safeguard regime is poorly equipped to address the distinctive character of AI-induced labor disruption. Rooted in a product-specific, sectoral logic, the Agreement on Safeguards fails to accommodate the cross-cutting, anticipatory nature of AI shocks, and excludes services altogether. To address this gap, the chapter proposes a new WTO instrument: a special safeguard mechanism specifically designed to enable members to respond to systemic employment dislocation linked to trade in AI-intensive products and services. It outlines the foundations for such a mechanism, proposes core design elements, and considers necessary guardrails to prevent protectionist misuse. Rather than eroding multilateralism, this approach seeks to preserve it: by equipping the WTO with tools that enable governments to manage labor transitions within a rules-based framework, this chapter aims to reaffirm the WTO’s relevance in an era of general-purpose technological disruption.

Suggested Citation

  • Tsai-fang Chen, 2026. "Forging Trade Rules in the Age of AI: The Case for Special Labor Safeguards," Economics, Law, and Institutions in Asia Pacific, in: Junji Nakagawa & Taro Hamada & Yoshimichi Ishikawa (ed.), Geopolitical Risks and Geoeconomics in International Economic Law, chapter 19, pages 379-394, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:eclchp:978-981-95-6996-0_19
    DOI: 10.1007/978-981-95-6996-0_19
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:eclchp:978-981-95-6996-0_19. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.