Introduction

This chapter argues that the contemplation of international law on the left in the context of international trade law necessarily implies engaging in a radical political economy critique of transnational economic law in the form of historical materialist analysis. There are two parts to this claim. The first part is that international trade law is best regarded as a form of transnational and not international economic law. The remit of the law of international trade is expanding to include economic relations that touch upon most every dimension of existence and which defy classification as domestic or international, private or public, and local or global. The contemporary trade regime institutionalised in the World Trade Organization (WTO) governs matters that extend well beyond border controls to reach deeply inside the domestic jurisdiction of states.