ABSTRACT
In the current discussion of international trade between developed nations and newly industrialized countries, the incorporation of a requirement on labor standards, a social clause, has been proposed as a means of ensuring that the competitiveness of the latter group is not 'unfair' in the sense that it builds on the existence of labor market practices that are not accepted in Western countries. The application of the social clause means that either the countries to which the clause is applied change the undesirable practices or else that traditional methods to restrict their exports, like tariffs or quotas, are employed by the countries imposing the clause.
