In the UK and Germany, manufactured exports have doubled to two-fifths of production over the same period. And the growth of global finance has outstripped even the growth of trade. The average weekly turnover of foreign-exchange markets now exceeds the value of goods traded internationally in a year. But nations manifestly still do control access to the fast-growing international economic regulatory system. South African and Israeli judges now cite the US Supreme Court in their decisions.
International agreements get legal force only through their incorporation into national law.
The weakness at the heart of this new order is that the interlocking trading relationships that draw governments onto the world stage in the first place also make it more difficult to define a single, coherent national interest. And that makes inevitable increasing collisions between officials and the powerful private interests they ostensibly represent. At the WIPO conference on digital copyright in Geneva in December 1996, for example, the staunchest opposition to the US government's position came from US companies - whose lobbyists helped cobble together an alliance of developing nations to defeat Washington's proposals. Inc. All rights reserved.