International legal standards for foreign trade activities: current issues

The subject of the research is the international legal standards regulating foreign trade activities. The article offers a modern assessment of international legal regulation of foreign trade in the context of new challenges and threats. It highlights the levels and forms of such regulation, the presence of private and public law components, blocks of tariff regulation, and prohibitions and restrictions. Attention is drawn to sanction regimes in the contemporary practice of foreign trade activities, as well as the geopolitical aspects of supranational legal regulation of foreign trade. The necessity for the contemporary regulation of foreign trade relations through "soft" regulation means such as trade customs, model acts, standard contracts, and other recommended acts is justified. Principles, substantive and procedural norms in international legal regulation of foreign trade are identified, along with its intersectoral nature. The methods of systemic analysis and classification, historical and comparative legal methods, legal formalization methods, and the problem method were used in addressing the research topic. The main conclusions of the conducted research are statements about significant trends and features of contemporary international legal regulation of foreign trade amid new challenges and threats of various origins. The following essential trends in such regulation are highlighted: the active influence of geopolitical factors, a shift from a universal (global) level to regional and bilateral levels, an increasing importance of aspects of national and regional security in regulating foreign trade, an expansion of the public law regulation block, and the strengthening of new centers of economic integration. It is concluded that the principles and activities of the World Trade Organization are ineffective in ensuring the basic principles of foreign trade activities, primarily the principle of freedom of foreign trade. The novelty of the research lies in the evaluation of international standards of foreign trade, based on the WTO agreement package, in light of new economic and political conditions.