Trump’s Assault on the Global Trading System

2021 ◽  
pp. 71-98
Author(s):  
Kent Jones
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Trade Liberalization ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Trading System ◽  
Appellate Body ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
System P ◽  
Institutional Aspects ◽  
Trade War ◽  
Dispute Settlement System

This chapter addresses Trump’s trade policy goal, which was to overturn the rules-based global system favoring trade liberalization. He did this with the help of his trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, a lawyer familiar with the legal and institutional aspects of trade. His assault on WTO rules began with unilateral tariffs on steel and aluminum, declaring that imports from all countries, including close allies, endangered national security. He bypassed WTO dispute settlement provisions to launch a trade war against China, with escalating tariffs, and finally forced the WTO dispute settlement system to shut down with repeated vetoes of appellate body appointments. His so-called trade war truce with China also violated WTO provisions on nondiscrimination. He repeatedly imposed tariffs on countries he deemed to be currency manipulators, despite evidence to the contrary, and threatened tariffs on Mexico in order to force the country to change its immigration policy. As the former leader of the global trading system, Trump’s actions undermined the foundations of the global trading system.

Trade and Development

2019 ◽  
pp. 284-306
Author(s):  
Makane Moïse Mbengue
Keyword(s):  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Settlement System ◽  
Trading System ◽  
Multilateral Trade ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
System P ◽  
Multilateral Trading System ◽  
Indirect Impact ◽  
Dispute Settlement System

This chapter describes and analyzes the UN’s contribution to the field of trade and development. Despite UN treaty-making being scarce in this area, the Organization has played a decisive role in the building and shaping of the multilateral trading system. In particular, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has allowed for a better integration of developmental concerns within multilateral trade. In addition to these aspects of direct influence by the UN, it has also had some indirect impact on the construction of the jurisprudence in the context of the WTO dispute settlement system.

Extraterritorial Shrimps, NGOs and the WTO Appellate Body

1999 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 199-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asif H. Qureshi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Market Access ◽  
The United States ◽  
Consultation Process ◽  
Appellate Body ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
The Us ◽  
Wto Appellate Body ◽  
Dispute Settlement System

At the centre of the international trading order, under the framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO), lies a dispute-settlement system. This system offers a graduated conflict-resolution mechanism that begins with a consultation process; progresses to adjudication, through a panel system, and ends in an appellate process.1 Under this machinery, in October 1996 India, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand (the complainants) requested joint consultations with the United States, regarding the US prohibition on the importation of certain shrimps and shrimp products caught with fishing technology considered by the United States adversely to affect the population of sea turtles—an endangered species under CITES.2 The US prohibition arose from section 609 of Public Law 101–1623 and associated regulations and judicial rulings (hereafter referred to as section 609). In a nutshell the complainants claimed denial of market access to their exports, and the United States justified this on grounds of conservation. However, as a consequence of the failure of the consultations, the WTO Dispute Settlement Body established a panel, around April 1997, to consider a joint complaint against the United States in relation to section 609. Australia, Ecuador, the European Communities, HongKong, China, Mexico and Nigeria joined the complainants as third parties. In May 1998 the panel's report was published, containing a decision in favour of the complainants. In July 1998 the United States appealed to the WTO Appellate Body, and in October 1998 the Appellate Body issued its report.4

Legalization in context: The design of the WTO’s dispute settlement system

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 304-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred Elsig
Keyword(s):  
Rational Design ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Settlement System ◽  
Trading System ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
Multilateral Trading System ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Dispute Settlement System

This article asks why the dispute settlement provisions of the multilateral trading system underwent significant reforms during the negotiations that led to the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995. Why did the leading trading powers accept a highly legalized system that departed from established political–diplomatic forms of settling disputes? The contribution of this article is threefold. First, it complements existing accounts that exclusively focus on the United States with a novel explanation that takes account of contextual factors. Second, it offers an in-depth empirical case study based on interviews with negotiators who were involved and novel archival evidence on the creation of the new WTO dispute settlement system. Third, by unpacking the long-standing puzzle of why states designed a highly legalized system, it addresses selected blind spots of the legalization and the rational design literatures with the aim of providing a better understanding about potential paths leading toward significant changes in legalization.

Conclusions to Part II

2019 ◽  
pp. 161-166
Author(s):  
Sivan Shlomo Agon
Keyword(s):  
World Trade ◽  
Goal Attainment ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
The Other ◽  
Appellate Body ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
Rule Compliance ◽  
The World ◽  
Dispute Settlement System ◽  
The One

When asked what, if anything, distinguishes US-Clove Cigarettes from other disputes filed with the World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement System (DSS), an Appellate Body (AB) Secretariat staff member replied: ‘A number of things and nothing at the same time’.1 This answer aptly captures the story of trade-and disputes and the DSS’s goal-attainment patterns in such cases, as revealed in this second part of the book. On the one hand, as in all WTO disputes, the DSS appears to be engaged in this class of cases in the routine legal exercise of law application and interpretation while pursuing its multiple goals, including rule-compliance and dispute resolution. On the other hand, as a WTO practitioner remarked when discussing the ‘interpretative exercise’ carried out by the DSS in trade-and disputes:...

scholarly journals Introduction

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-172
Author(s):  
CHAD P. BOWN ◽  
PETROS C. MAVROIDIS
Keyword(s):  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Settlement System ◽  
Appellate Body ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
Dispute Settlement System

The WTO dispute settlement system has come under severe criticism in recent times, which does not seem, for now at least, to affect its relevance. In terms of output, 2017 was yet another bumper year. We review eight cases that constitute the ‘last word’ of the dispute settlement system: we review exhaustively all Appellate Body reports, as well as all un-appealed panel reports.

Mutually agreed solutions under the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding: An Analytical Framework after the Softwood Lumber Arbitration

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALBERTO ALVAREZ-JIMÉNEZ
Keyword(s):  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Settlement System ◽  
Trade Disputes ◽  
Applicable Law ◽  
Softwood Lumber ◽  
Appellate Body ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
Intimate Relation ◽  
Dispute Settlement System

AbstractThe unprecedented enforcement of the mutually agreed solution (MAS) in the WTO Softwood Lumber disputes – but outside the WTO dispute settlement system – and the recent use of MAS to resolve important trade disputes should trigger a hard look at these dispute settlement instruments provided for by the DSU. This article seeks to provide a detailed framework of analysis of MAS under the DSU that allows the WTO dispute settlement system to adjudicate MAS-related disputes. WTO Members should not go outside the system to enforce MAS. The article illustrates that MAS can create binding obligations and that MAS are WTO law, given the explicit reference to them in the DSU, their intimate relation with the WTO-covered agreements and the requirement for compliance with these agreements. In addition, the article offers an interpretation of the DSU that allows panels and the Appellate Body to regard MAS as applicable law. This interpretation is offered in the view that there is no policy reason to sustain that these controversies – always fully related to WTO rights and obligations and framed under the corners of the covered agreements – have to be resolved by an adjudication system other than that of the WTO.

scholarly journals The Reflection of WTO Brazilian Dispute Settlements on Domestic Law: A Place to Legal Pluralism?

Eudaimonia ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 137-146
Author(s):  
Monique Libardi ◽  
Patricia Glym
Keyword(s):  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Trading System ◽  
Trade Disputes ◽  
Trade Law ◽  
International Trade Law ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
The World ◽  
Current Scenario ◽  
Dispute Settlements ◽  
Dispute Settlement System

International trade law, followed by the development of legal mechanisms for regulation of multilateral trading system, from General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade – GATT (1948–94), Uruguay Round (1986–94) to World Trade Organization – WTO (1995) dispute settlement system is the current scenario of the world economy transactions. This paper aims to analyze whether Brazilian activism in the world trading system may be identified in the WTO Dispute Settlement dealing with the concept of direct effect on international law. Since 1995, Brazil has been an assiduous claimant at the WTO and at the South American Common Market (MERCOSUR) dispute mechanism. However, explaining Brazilian participation at the WTO Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) requires a collision between the Brazilian private sector and the political relevance that trade disputes have acquired.

scholarly journals Book Review: Jens Lehne, Crisis at the WTO: Is the Blocking of Appointments to the WTO Appellate Body by the United States Legally Justified?

sui generis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Sieber-Gasser
Keyword(s):  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Settlement System ◽  
Appellate Body ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
The Us ◽  
Legal Arguments ◽  
Wto Appellate Body ◽  
Dispute Settlement System

The US policy of blocking new appointments to the WTO Appellate Body relied on a number of legal arguments against the body’s work and ultimately succeeded in rendering the appellate mechanism of the WTO dispute settlement system inoperable in December 2019. In his book, Jens Lehne carefully analyses the various legal arguments officially brought forward by the US until summer 2019. His analysis is proof of the vulnerability of the WTO: despite equality of WTO members enshrined in the WTO treaties, the fate of the WTO remains largely dependent on the willingness of large economies to comply with a legally binding dispute settlement system.

The pandemic is delaying solutions to the most pressing problems of global trade while creating new challenges

2020 ◽  
pp. 22-29
Author(s):  
A. Portanskiy
Keyword(s):  
Global Economy ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Global Trade ◽  
Economic Regulation ◽  
Settlement System ◽  
Appellate Body ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Dispute Settlement System

The article raises the question of the role of Global economic regulation institutions, in particular, the WTO after the Covid-19 pandemic. The author considers the aggravated modern problems of the WTO, and focuses on the crisis of the Organization that arose in December 2019 in connection with the suspension of the appellate body functioning in the WTO dispute settlement system. The author also tries to identify new challenges of the XXI century for the Global economy, regulatory institutions, as well as for Russia.

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