President Biden has ambitious plans for the US economy. Biden's “Made in America” plan aims to pour public investment into manufacturing, as well as research and development, in order to respond to domestic concerns about unfair global competition and off-shoring US jobs. These policies, however, inasmuch as they prioritize US economic interests over competing interests in other countries, are likely to run afoul of international treaty commitments made over the past 25 years. In this, Biden will be in good company—joining a community of world leaders attempting to meet the needs of their domestic constituents within the constraints of the global trading system.

There is clearly an unresolved tension between the network of rules that make up the global trading system and the individual members of that system. The system of global trade is made up of one overarching set of multilateral trade agreements, more than 300 preferential free trade agreements and almost 3,000 bilateral investment treaties. The primary rationale for these trade and investment agreements is to establish a stable regulatory environment in which protectionist national interests are neutralized in favor of a more optimal distribution of global wealth. They have the ostensibly unbiased role of paving the way for global commerce so that economic growth takes place as quickly and efficiently as possible. National governments, on the other hand, must constantly respond to changing circumstances through new laws and regulations. They aim at increasing economic diversification and development, maintaining financial stability and fiscal solvency, protecting vulnerable populations, providing affordable access to medicines, and responding quickly and agilely to domestic and global crises.

Troubling trends in treaty-making and international jurisprudence, however, suggest that global rules increasingly present obstacles to national governments pursuing these aims. While the original project of liberalizing international trade was focused on lowering tariffs and nontariff border measures among as many nations as possible, while allowing them to regulate as they like, treaty texts since the mid-1990s have encroached more and more on domestic policymaking. As this volume highlights, this encroachment takes place in industrial and investment policy, capital flow management and debt policy, as well as health and climate policy.