Episode 41: Thinking through Rupture in International Economic Law: Views from Latin America

Welcome to Egil, the podcast. A few weeks ago, at the World Economic Forum, the Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Keine, gave a widely-noted speech in which he described the current period we're living through as a rupture in the world order, the end of a comforting fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality. And those words are translated from his French. How should we be thinking about this rupture in the international economic order that we're living through? What is happening to international law? The purposes to which it's being put, its centrality as a technology of governing over distance, its status as a carrier for aspirations to multilateralism and universalism? Are we living through a rupture? Or merely the loss of faith of a hegemon in its own international legal tools? My name is Andrew Lang, and I'm a professor of international law and global governance at the University of Edinburgh. I'm delighted to have with me Michelle Ratten-Sanchez and Nicholas Perone. Nicholas is professor of economic law and director of the Centre for Law, Regulation and Sustainable Economics at the University of Dad, developed Paraiso in Chile. He's also editor in chief of the Business and Human Rights Journal. Michelle is professor at FGV Sao Paulo School of Law in Brazil and head of its postgraduate programme on Law and Development. She's coordinator of the Centre on Global Law and Development and co-WTO Chair in Brazil. Michelle, Nicholas, welcome to EGIL, the podcast. Thank you, Andrew. It's great to be here. Thank you. Given both of your backgrounds and your expertise, a lot of our conversation is going to be focused on the Latin American region. But let's begin the conversation by reminding our listeners about the Trump administration's use of tariffs over its first 12 months, which has been one of the most dramatic and talked about features of its international economic policy over 2025. So even the most casual observer knows that in April last year, President Trump announced the prospect of substantial new tariffs on almost all of its trading partners. And that announcement prompted a large number of bilateral negotiations as those trading partners sought to reduce those tariffs in return for concessions. And depending on how you count, there's about 18 different bilateral deals, including foreign Latin America. Let's stipulate that those tariffs are illegal under almost all interpretations of the US's international legal obligations. And we also learned just a few days ago from the US Supreme Court that most of them are illegal as a matter of domestic US law. Nicholas Michelle, I'd be interested to hear your perspective on how these tariffs have landed in the Latin American region, how disruptive have they been, what's the response being, what do you see which is interesting in the bilateral deals which countries in the region have negotiated. Nicholas, can we start with you? Yeah, sure. And this is, I think, an excellent question. As much of the discussion has been focusing on what's going on in the EU or China and a bit less on the rest of the world. So just let me provide you, I think, three examples of how these tariffs have landed in Latin America. The first one concerns Chile. Chile, as people might know, is the country in South America that signed first an FTA with the United States. And when that FTA was negotiated in the early 2000s, it was not only about access, market access, but it was also about institutional certainty and something that it's been quite interesting is to see how people who signed that agreement have to grapple with the fact that the certainty was gone completely. And Chilean authorities were saying, "Well, our case is different because we have an FTA." But actually, we know that that really matters much. The other story that I think is quite telling is that many delegations in Geneva, that's in American delegations, we're discussing what to do, particularly with these agreements that Trump administration is trying to negotiate. And some of them, particularly the neoclassical economies that are part of those missions, were completely frustrated. As they defended this FTA strongly and some of these countries remains a controversial topic. And they see now that things have been changed by the other country that used to admire. And lastly, let me say that the case of Argentina, I think, is quite telling because while the Trump administration is pursuing more of a protectionist policies, when it comes to trade, Argentina is doing exactly the opposite. But nonetheless, there is a very good sin between the two administrations. And I think that tells us a lot about that this is not only about trade, but there are things that are being in the discussion, in this case, of course, the sort of political alignment between these two administrations, when it comes to some normative mothers, I think it's how it really empowers those relations. Yeah, that's super interesting, Michelle. Well, first I'd like to offer a few remarks about the president's case. Looking at Brazil, I think, it's important to recall that during the first rep administration, measures were already economic disruptive. And from the legal point of view, I see a soft commutation of strategies in the case of Brazil since then. They are operating along three main axes. They are negotiated commutation, multilateral litigation, and domestic institutional reciprocity. During the first trip administration, 2018, Brazil negotiated an adjustment of these two tariffs of 25%. And converted it in quarter arrangements, for example, in 2025, Brazil again responded through diplomatic negotiation over the increase of tariffs and calibrated accommodation whenever feasible in different sectors, which was kind of supported by a structured public-private coordination that is a legacy of the WTO era. Brazil also treated multilateral mitigation, not merely as a justification, I would say, but as an additional negotiation space. In 2018, it actively participated as a third party in China claim against the US. In 2025, Brazil moved a step further and initiated it on the WTO complaint. So this is the idea that the recourse of the WTO function as a silent device and as a way of preserving legal average, even amid the institutional fragilities of the dispute settlement system. And still important is the institutional consequence of those episodes of external economic coercion. Directly to not lonely by the United States, let's say, but also in response to instruments such as the European Union and Cben was the proposal in 2023 of what later became the economic reciprocity law that was enacted right after the tariffs increase in 2025. So I see that in this respect, Brazil approach differs at least in degree from what we see in other late American countries, especially in these emphasis and looking for multilateral mitigation. And this structure of domestic institutionalized institutionalization of reciprocity. I think this is the core of Brazil reactive strategy today. Thanks, Michelle. Perhaps I can ask you, Nicholas, I think for a lot of international lawyers, it's been important to stress the way that the global economy is legally constituted. We've focused on the significance of the legal infrastructure of global markets in shaping competitive and distributional outcomes. And I think both of you actually have made that point in your work. But one way of understanding what's happening now is that these actions, and in some sense the shocking illegality of it all puts into question the centrality of international law, or maybe even law generally in constituting economic order. Is that how you see things? And I guess more generally, has it prompted you to rethink your views in any way about the role of international economic law in the post-Cold War order? Nicholas. Thank you, Andrea. I think this is a great question. I mean, when I started studying the WTO, I was told there was a period of time which was mainly dominated by diplomacy and economics, it was a gap area. And then we moved to the WTO, which is more legalized. And I remember these famous articles by Joseph Wiler, the rule of lawyers and the ethos of diplomats, which was precisely making that point. And while I was doing my PhD at the LSE, I remember discussing these with some political economies who were telling me why Apple Eboid decision so long and so complicated to read. They just made a decision. But I was telling them, the Apple Eboid is not just resolving a case, it's also some kind of a war making happening there using the language and the grammar of law. And I think that's what we mean by the law is constituting or co-constituting. But yeah, I think you are right that in the last couple of years, I'm not completely rethinking this, but trying to understand. if there is something else there. And how I started to think about that is that for a long time, I think international economic lawyers from the global south know we all are familiar with this argument of kicking away the ladder. There were some industrial policy tools or other tools that can't particularly sell there. East Asia used to develop that because of the WTO where I've actually known a longer available for the rest of the global south. And yeah, I've been based in the global south and having talked to a good number of, you know, trade negotiators and policy makers. I realized that it's not true that, you know, these countries are desperate to pass these measures but the WTO top down pressure is making that impossible. Actually, when you look at it, it's actually slightly more complicated and fluid. And many of these administrations have no interest whatsoever in implementing these measures. So it's not that if you get rid of the WTO, all these development policies will be implemented. And we are seeing that today. So to me, I think what is the challenge is to understand to be more fine-grained or let's say, I think for as a project for us international lawyers, the idea that international law is really co-constituting or constituting the war or con-constituting the war, sounds very appealing. But when you think about what's really happening on the ground, I'm more scientifically speaking, not our project, but let's take a sort of step as a scientist. I think it's slightly more complicated. And at this particular time, trying to understand what law is doing and what law is not doing, I think will be a fantastic contribution to what law actually can do to address the problems we are facing and when we need others to help us, you know, economists or sociologists or whatever. But yeah, I think it's an excellent question and something to maybe keep thinking about. Thanks. So I guess reflecting back a little bit, Nicholas, I guess what you're saying is it's partly a question of the centrality of law, partly a question of analytically the impossibility of distinguishing law from other phenomena and also partly about being subtle about the various different modalities in which law constitutes social order. And yeah, so thanks for that, Nicholas. I'd like to zoom out a little bit and ask you both to reflect on some of the potential implications of the new US posture for development strategies in the region. And I guess this follows directly on your intervention, Nicholas, now. So if we look back to that post-Cold War International Economic Order from roughly the late 1980s, early 1990s through to whatever 2015 or so, that was an order which certainly narrowed development policy space. But at the same time, it did offer a defined package of opportunities at least for developing countries. The chance to occupy positions in global value chains, supplying northern markets, especially the North American market for Latin American countries, improved access to foreign capital with that a certain level of technology transfer, reasonably open markets for primary commodities, agri-food natural resources. And then more recently, that's been supplemented by the dramatic expansion of the exports of primary commodities to China, as well as access to Chinese infrastructure investment. And all of those opportunities were underpinned by an international legal architecture of WTO Law of free trade agreements, bilateral investment treaties and so on. And that architecture seems at least to be crumbling or at least the underlying quid pro quo with the United States at least on which it rested is being renegotiated. At the same time, you see from some other actors are doubling down on that international legal architecture. And I'm thinking here of the EU-Murkisaw FTA recently signed in January. So here's my question to you both. What do you think of that diagnosis? Is that international legal architecture crumbling? If so, what does it mean for development strategies and how might international law be used by countries in this region seeking to craft new development strategies? And in what ways? Michelle, can I turn to you first? I think that it's interesting to link this question where the previous one, Tineco, has the idea of when you are talking about this in the entirety of international law or this international law architecture. For me, the question that takes us like, what are we naming as international law, right? Because we have this perspective of what has granted the liberal international order. But at the same time, there were many other instruments, many other tools that countries have developed and have been applied, that also were very important to the coordination of international economic relations. So based on that question, well, Brazil is named sometimes as a paddy bus, but strange animals from Australia in the world, because it was not the developing country that was enthusiastically signing bilateral investment treaties, not signing FTAs. And in a certain point, I had this question together with that colleague that is Fabio Modozino, and that, OK, but Brazil is increasingly being part of the international economic order. And what is regulating those relations and that increase of trade and that increase of investments? And then based on some empirical research, we have identified that there are arrangements that depart from classic trade investment treaty models. And this instrument invite us to rethink international economic law in more complex and dynamic terms and approach that we've developed in the idea of matrix levels in thinking about treaties and international arrangements, between state state and international arrangements, but also the national regulation and the private action. So rather than a million comprehensive education centered frameworks, we see that certain relevant economies have the potential to be structuring around partnership agreements, interagency, memoranda, expected mutual recognition, technical standards, bilateral communities designed for continuous negotiation and regulatory coordination. I think it's important to shed light on those architectures that are also having a role in the international economic system. And to understand how they do operate. And what we can learn from there, and what are the resources that we can find in expanding maybe their structure, their potentialities or not. Thanks. Thanks, Michelle. So that international legal architecture was always more broad than we traditionally think. And in some of those more hidden aspects, I guess you're saying is we might be able to see some technologies for which can be harnessed. Interesting. Thanks, Nicholas. Yeah, yeah, I think I follow from what Michelle said. Maybe the rest of Latin America is following Brazil in this. So recently in December, that was a meeting at the European Economic Commission for Latin America, in which one, Latin American country presented its vision for trade and investment for the next 30 years. And one of the things that came quite clearly from that meeting in which different departments were there. So mining, infrastructure, not just trade and investment, but pretty much everybody was there. Is that instead of you getting or taking a system or a regime like an FTA that is being proposed by the US or the EU and you just sign it, countries need to have a vision about where they want to go in terms of development, instead of new industries they want to invest on, et cetera, and then build on that their trade policy. And another thing that's always the top down is being kind of challenged, idea one size fits all, and it's really a bottom up. And you see voices that come in from that. And of course, I think one of the things that come from that is that countries are looking at a global value-chain vision or view or mapping to think about the trade and investment policy is no any longer about specific sectors only but just the whole chain and how they can add value to that chain. And in the case of Chile, for instance, I think there is an interesting lesson when it comes to the lithium strategy. Because at first it was a lot about batteries and electric vehicles. But I think with the years it was a sort of a recognition, particularly because of voices of the private sector who were pushing on that. That the future actually lies in sustainability, in services, in what comes be added value, not downstream but upstream. And that caused too many of the things that Michele was talking about, standards, the need of countries like Chile or other countries in Latin America to participate in standard setting bodies, technology transfer, technology cooperation, that they have a memorandum, the idea of merging the trade and scientific agendas of cooperation with the two being two very important ones. So I think there is a bit of a push, at least, I mean maybe Brazil is different and Michele can comment on that. But push away from the traditional industrialization of making things and a more recognition or acceptance that the future of making value looks slightly are actually very different from the 1960s. trade on investment agenda. - Hmm, thanks Nicholas. So most of the conversation so far has been about the tariffs and their impacts and so on, but that's hardly the only challenge. More recently, we've seen, well, the US military operation in Venezuela to capture Nicolas Maduro, and which has enabled the US to administer the Venezuela and oil industry. We've also seen the threats to Greenland, which some connect at least to deposits of critical minerals in that space, access to critical sea lanes up in the Arctic. The question of access to critical minerals has been central to US diplomacy in relation to the conflicts in Ukraine, DRC. And of course, we forget it now, but only last February, President Trump threatened to invade Panama in order to reassert control over the canal. So what's at stake here is access to resources and control over critical choke points and the use of military might to gain access to them. And I've heard Adam Tuz describe all this recently as cosplay resource imperialism. At some level, I guess there's not much new here. The post-Colid War Order was also structured in ways to ensure the hedgements access to resources, oil, infrastructure, ports, transport lanes. But the technologies have changed. And at the very least, it seems that the US has lost faith in international law as a means of securing that access. On the other hand, you look at the EU, which is very much doubling down on international legal strategies to secure access to critical minerals, treaty-based restrictions on export restrictions, prohibitions of dual pricing arrangements, challenges to Indonesia's nickel export ban and so on. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the role that international law might play in mediating new conflicts over resources. What might be the role of international law in asserting and operationalizing an international order which protects fair and equitable access to the world's resources for everyone? - Well, as a previous information, I think it's the sense is that the United America is not with the drawing from what we have from international economic law, but it's kind of redesigning it. And as you mentioned, the region in terms of resource politics and international law, late-Namerican has been at the epicenter historically. And so what we see as redesigning in international law on that sense, I think that in the context of this global competition over critical minerals and in the implementation of the inputs and biodiversity that are important capacities in the region, there's idea of permanence of variety over an avatural resource is likely to regain dominance, but as Nikol was mentioning with a different taste in the sense that it's better understood today as regulatory capacity, exercised with cooperative frameworks. And what we see in that brick of integration of international law as a mediating space from the keys of Brazil for example, there is this recalibration of investment treaties with the design of cooperation and facilitation investment agreements and that aims and maintaining the flexibility for industrial and greenish strategies while you still attracting capital. Intradigrama agreements countries are looking for opportunities to have climate provisions and having them central but can help to structure green value chains and support upgrading in the region. Although we see that there are some gatekeeping tools if standards are externally imposed without recognizing developmental symmetries. So excessive coercion from dominant economies whether through protection is trade measures or extraterrestrial regulatory reach, I guess at risk three green, destabilizing reactions. So fairness today in the global economy, I think should not be reduced to this formal idea of non-discrimination maybe we should rethink about the importance of access technology, financing and sustainable development pathways. There are many potential for this type of exchange in more symmetrical relations among middle powers. In that sense your previous reference to current is remarks at levels points to such interesting direction. Greater coordination among middle economies. But I guess that one major tension remains that is China. For OECD middle powers, China is increasingly framed as a systemic risk for several big countries and Latin American countries. However, China is viewed more as an opportunity for the diversification development. So the real question becomes is how should middle powers engage with China in a way that avoids replicating poor civil logics, respect asymmetries and preserve strategic autonomy? So one of the central governance challenges of these transitions remains there. And if we think that remains a space for international law being mediating space and middle powers have a role there, I think that it's important to be clear how will deal with this reverberary that United States have established off the Western against China. - So let me start by saying what's the position I think of many of the, or many in their business elite in Latin America. So recently a CEO of a large mining corporation said, "If the US wants more of our critical minerals, they can buy it in the market. If the Chinese want more of our critical minerals, they can buy it in the market. This should be a market based economy and this is what we are striving for." And I think it's important to highlight that for good or bad, Latin America has been pursuing extractivist policies or sort of economics or more of capital accumulation for I don't know, 200 years now. And this is to some extent part of the problem of the region too. But generally speaking, I think the elites in the region, they prefer the market as a way to allocate those resources. - There is a bit of a difference what was happening in the 1950s and '60s, if you wanna, we're talking about the permanent sovereignty of natural resources project, because back then, what Latin American countries wanted was not only to control those resources, but also to be sure that they could invest the revenues into industrialization. I think for many business elites in Latin America, that's no longer the case. It might be in some country, but definitely not in others. So how Latin Americans or what Latin Americans reacted to that when you say about they were being sort of, protagonists of their being creative? I think they were reacted to what Benjamin calls called the legalist empire. So the US replaced Europe with this sort of illegal approach to imperialism. So it's not a raw military power any longer and got both diplomacy, but it's diplomatic protection. It's about a little rude talking about the minimum standard of treatment, and then Carlos Calvo is a reaction and is in, like, in theory, there's a very interesting dialogue between these two legal minds. I mean, Ruth and Calvo, that if you go to the details, I think it's very interesting, because their difference were not so far as strong as people sometimes think. But I think that then was presented by Latin America as a different type of legality. There is Calvo and there is the minimum standard of treatment. What is more interesting and less known is that the lexicon of the charter of economic rights and duties of states during the New International Economic Order is also about duties. So Latin American countries, when they proposed that and that was embraced by the Third World, was the idea that countries, particularly, not developed countries, also had duties to the rest of the world, particularly, that they need to take into account the consequences of their trade and investment measures to the rest of the world. So that was a structural question. If you want to go to the coercion that was in building this legalist empire, what we see now is that the US is kind of moving away from this. Now, the king is naked, you could say now. And it's all about power. So how is the region going to react to this different type of imperialism coming from the US? I think it's an interesting question. I mean, Michel is right that there is a lot of critical measures in Latin America, but we haven't seen anything close to what Indonesia has done with nickel in Latin America. And the difficulties to create a self-cartel for lithium for it has been enormous. And the lack of appetite from all the different countries in Latin America to do that. So I think at least to me, there's a question that more coordination in the region is necessary. It's more about forgetting about what international law is preventing you from doing, but rather thinking about what you can do and propose to the world, what is going to be your position, misavage to the world? Because I think this threat of this imperialist threat is slightly different from the one we saw in the 1950s and '60s. Maybe if I could just ask a very quick follow-up, Nicholas. So I mean, I phrased the question as I did deliberately, you know, what role might international law play in an operationalizing and international order which protects fair and equitable access to the world's resources? And so, you know, on one hand, we have the threat of resource imperialism, which emphatically is not that. On the other, the description you gave of the mining industry CEOs saying, "Let the market open brackets as currently legally constituted decide is also not quite the same thing." And I guess what you're saying is there must be a third way and looking for inspiration, perhaps in those post-war war two decades, the normativity there. Am I hearing that? Yeah, yeah. I think that's true though. I think because of the conditions are very different. It's more inspiration, I suppose, to copy him what was done earlier. Thank you. So, we've just been talking about the use of military means for economic ends, but the other part of what's going on is the increasing use of economic leverage and economic aggression for what we might think of as in scare quotes, non-economic ends. And just going back to that speech from Mark Carney, he observed that, and here I'm quoting, "Great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited." Now, of course, it might be used in many developing countries that this has only just now begun, but the newness of the context is clear. And a lot of these measures are being justified as necessary for the purposes of economic security, but the distinction between economic security and economic coercion, not to mention anti-coercion, is slippery and political, and of course, can appear differently depending on which end of the stick you are. And so, to address that ambiguity, there have been, and there are calls for the development and clarification of international legal rules on economic coercion, perhaps revisiting those debates from the 1970s and early 1980s that we were just talking about. And I know you both have thoughts on this economic coercion and economic security. Michelle, there have been periods in the history of your own country, Brazil, in which the language of economic security has been deployed in specific and troubling ways. Can you tell us about these and the lessons that you brought from them? Today, I think that we face a key challenge in the region in the idea of how to engage with the security tone. In a way, it's unavoidable dominant economies are applying that language and designing the illegal tools on economic relations on that sense. But if we think about how those countries reacted at, we also have a perspective in the region that is the way that we import a lot from other countries. We process that and then we deliver a different thing. So, the perspective is that historically, the region had, when I'm internalizing this notion of national security during the 20th century under the US doctrine of national security. It didn't know that it reframed it, it redesigned it to its domestic needs. We previously discussed what Niko, that Latin America has a particularity in this new scenario of global rivalry in the sense that the region doesn't have problems of countries of territory, countries disputing in security terms, their territories. They can do that in the international court of justice, but not really in disputing with arms and with security discourses. So, what happened in importing that notion in the 20th century was that a security was applying mostly domestically instead of having an external enemy, we decided to have an internal enemy. And so that brought many human rights problems and tortures and policy problems. But in the domestic sense for economic arrangements, also they adopted this notion of national security as part of an economic development idea, an economic development approach in which they stayed would be part of this development. After democratization, however, it revised its legal framework to constrain the use of national security language. In the 1988 constitutional, it decided to limit this open-ended security justification. And now we face a new dilemma. Externally, the global economy is becoming more security-sized. And internally, we must decide how to design emergency economic tools without undermining democratic safeguards and revisionists. So, the language of national security has largely been replaced in foreign economic policy by references to public interests and public order. These are also broad concepts, but there is an important difference there. National security, especially when linked to defense and survival narratives tends to operate in a black box shielded from scrutiny. And public interest language by contrast has traditionally required more transparency due to process and opportunities for affected parties to respond. And the key challenges is not to engage with the security turn, but how to do it without normalizing opacity and eroding constitutional disciplines. The challenge for the region is to adapt. I think and suggest security in its own ways under the perspective of public interest without surrendering but reinforcing the legal safeguards that have defined this, although precarious democratic order we have tried to build in the region. Yeah, I think there's a really important lesson there, just at that high level of how a turn to economic security and international politics so often goes hand in hand with the mobilization of a particular kind of security discourse internally with the particular kind of exclusionary and aggressive mode of politics. Nicholas, how do you view this issue? I know I've heard you talk about the repoliticization of international economic relations. Is that what's going on? How do you conceptualize this? Thank you, Andrew. Yes. So just to add my two cents on that, I think some people have pointed out that national security opens up an agenda for developing strategies or industrial policy and it's true for instance that in the case of Chile, although you had a magnetic dictatorship was very, very hard on you know, liberalizing pretty much everything. They kept the lithium sector for the government, for the state. For because of, they thought that lithium had a sort of a nuclear dimension and that required national security and of course in the middle of the Cold War for an ally of the US and the UK, you know, you had to have very strong tight control of that. So I think it's true that there might be some spaces for you know, industrial policy, but we need to be careful because that's what Michel is saying in Latin America, this idea of national security has a very bad reputation and consequences that are really outrageous. And then there is then of course a question, all these things were gone in international economic law for some time. So the question of repolitization of international economic law, I think it's a great question. I have to give some credit to David Schneiderman for my thinking about the depolitization of international economic law and now the repolitization of it. We wrote a chapter for the critical legal theory research handbook and we need to update our chapters so we were having discussions about this. And I think that what we hear most of the time is that international economic law is being repolitized. The politics is back. Is it the politics of national security? As Michel was talking a second ago, is it the politics, the policies of technology of a technology called competition or race or the politics of the US China rivalry? But yeah, policies are back there. But talking with David, he was also telling me, which I think makes a lot of sense, that we still live in a war in which many of the international economic law institutions are neoliberal in the sense that they were designed to live many of the politics outside of the conversations. I think there is a space for certain type of politics that is sort of flooding the system as in national security and technology rivalries. But there is little space for inequality, there's little space for climate change. And this is what creates this a bit of a dishonest. There is a lot of politics company, but for many of us not the right politics, other parties who would like to see being discussed in the regime. Michel. Yes, there is an interesting point in what Ann Nicholson is saying is on the sense that to what extent can we really trust in the reform of the structures that we have for international economic law since we have kind of isolated it from order real and very chronic, let's say, problems of the world. And maybe I I think that this is the opportunity for us to look at older types of international and law tools that we may find out around in a way of avoiding that path dependence of those systematic problems and limitations that we can have either because of traditional powers that used to coordinate that those agenda or because it is there is not a room, not technical room there for doing that. It's not an easy way but this is and I think that every time that we discuss for example the WTO reform will come to that point is that what we should reform, how should we pursue that, should we get a limited number of members in doing that, should we go outside there, and probably we should look and add other layers of regulation and recognize them and although we don't have much leverage that countries are open to do that now but since we start maybe it can start working and we as an academics I think that we have the should have the compromise of really at least giving more emphasis on that and also describing how those things work well or good for it. So one final substantive question before we wrap up, so far we've talked as if the current turmoil in the international economic order is primarily provoked by the actions of the U.S. administration but of course it's not just the U.S. who has sought to contest the post-Cold War Liberal International Economic Order. Many in the global south have been seeking to build an alternative institutional infrastructure for some time and for a variety of different reasons and with different motives and it's possible to argue that the current moment is one in which the space for that kind of contestation is opening up and here I would refer to an editorial in the New York Times from a colleague of yours Michelle at FGV, Matthias Spector, who argued that this new register of coercion intervention hierarchy is likely to invite resistance and in his words multiply contestation. What he said is that countries of the global south have a shared political grammar forged by domination and resistance and this doesn't give them he said a shared agenda but it does he says produce a certain kind of agility coercion and here I'm quoting can extract short-term concessions but it also accelerates diversification pushes states to build exit options in finance technology and security security the harder great powers press the more they invite backlash. So I guess for this question I just wanted to ask you both how you see these dynamics of agility and resistance playing out and how do you read the place of the global south writ large in the current period of turmoil Michelle yes I do agree that coercion can extract those short-term concessions but also accelerate diversification we see that states are responding to that by building exit options in payment systems investment models supply chains and technology partnerships and these are not only geopolitical moves but they are being operationalized through international all mechanisms as I mentioned before but this is optimistic scenario for sure it's not available to everyone even advanced economies are navigating serious constraints we see how Japan is reacting to those moves and for parts of the global south including the in America is a moment that is both dangers and potentially transformative I see I think that it were two areas that are relevant for the region that are especially critical reforming the payment system and financial structures and establishing cooperative governance for sustainable resource extraction the point is that resistance as nickel previous dimension in the case of lithium requires resource and capacity and in in America systemic pressure often reinforces inequality historically which is already one of our deepest is structural vulnerabilities and it's becoming a problem of the world as well as we had just remarked so the point is that if security organization becomes the dominant grammar of economic relations I see I think that everyone becomes poor materially and politically the alternative is harder but clear to negotiate into dependence anchored in law sustainability and shared resilience and I see that that is where the real opportunities lie and we should look for that and I see that countries in the region in different ways are trying to look at that in different degrees and different capacities thanks Michelle there's a lot in there two key points so one you're talking about an alternative payments infrastructure which we know already there are some embryonic developments or more than embryonic developments on that front but also you mentioned specifically a cooperative governance architecture for sustainable extraction as another key priorities okay so that's super interesting two key priorities Nicholas yeah I think this is an excellent question isn't it I mean every time there is an important shift in international politics or international economics and many people in the global south and I think Michelle is colleague is probably one we are hoping that you know countries are going to get together and react you know in a coordinated and cooperative manner unfortunately sometimes that doesn't happen so I think that the first thing to keep trade to do is to separate you know where a whole one in a way ambition if you want to from what's really happening outward Hirschmann was a very good development economies who who wrote about the possibilities you know what's really possible based on the circumstances you need to draw the bridge they got between utopia and what's you know and sort of you know a very pessimistic approach I have to say I'm a bit pessimistic what with what countries can do at this particular point in time but I also want to also want to leave this idea of optimism open so this idea of possible is very hopeful helpful to me and one of the things what I'm a little bit yeah hesitant to say this is a moment of opportunity is that there is little solidarity between a global south countries at the moment and I think I think sometimes scholars we overestimate that solidarity based on ideas of the global south and the third world but actually when you start looking into it more in detail it's not so homogeneous countries are very different they have very different interests and one of the reasons why I think the needs national economic order failed it was there was an assumption that solidarity was there and then when you know there was about discussing specific things like points and opera then there was no solidarity any longer between exporting and importing a global south all countries and so I think that that is a relevant point to keep in mind I think any opportunity is not just about grammar or it's not about ideas it's also about having the conditions of opportunity to you know to take advantage of these changes and that it requires I think institutions politics for cooperation and coordination cooperation and coordination rarely happen out of nothing there has to be something out there that facilitates that cooperation coordination costs are not minor and I think this is very important in this particular point in time when Trump first announced his you know new tariffs the asian countries they said we're gonna have a sort of a common approach to this and the secretary general of us and say they're gonna be a meeting and what we saw afterwards was that countries were negotiating individually and asian already has that platform to cooperate and coordinate this is a moment in which for collective action you need to reduce those coordination costs so instead of you know doing that straight we need to start building up the possible the mechanisms and I think international law has a lot to contribute there that's what international law is for is to help countries to coordinate and collaborate in common concern when there is common concerns and common issues so hopefully we international lawyers find a way to contribute to to this particular moment and especially international lawyers based in the in the global south. Well thank you for finishing us on that note Nicholas so let me conclude then by thanking well the wonderful organizers of the EJUAL podcast Guy and Megan and thanks to you both Michelle Sanchez Nicholas Perrano for taking part in this conversation for sharing your insights and your time and I'm looking forward to continuing the conversation with you both thanks so much. Thank you Andrew. Thanks Andrew thank you thank you very much. Thanks for tuning in to stay up to date with what's happening in the world of international law and to listen Listen to previous episodes of The Podcast. Visit ediotalk.org.