Unhappy with the rulings of the WTO dispute settlement system, which disproportionately targeted US use of trade remedies, the United States ended the entire system in 2019. There are multiple hurdles to agreeing to new terms of trade remedy use and thus potentially restoring some form of binding dispute settlement. First, a change would affect access to policy flexibility by the now large number of users of trade remedies. Second, although China's exports are the overwhelming target of trade remedies, exporters in other countries increasingly find themselves caught up in trade remedy actions linked to China. Third, critical differences posed by China's economic model may call for new rules for trade remedies, but no consensus on those rules has emerged. Even some of the most promising reforms have practical limitations, create additional challenges, or may be politically unviable.

The paper deals with regional policies towards temporary labour migration (or the movement of natural persons) with specific reference to the liberalization of trade in services. The paper deals with policies towards labour migration, and progress in related Mode 4 negotiations within the GATS framework, among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN. It finds that unilateral, national policies rather than regional or multilateral commitments dominate in policies towards temporary foreign workers. Despite advances on administrative issues, little progress has been made towards achieving ‘GATS-Plus’ outcomes, partly because of the lack of a strong political commitment among member countries to liberalizing the entry of foreign workers and partly because of real or imagined shortcomings in the ‘architecture’ for Mode 4 negotiations. Weak political will has led to relatively shallow commitments with a focus on skilled workers over unskilled migrants. With regard to architectural issues, we draw attention to the weaknesses of the ‘positive list’ approach in services trade negotiations, specifically with regard to the case of labour migration. However, the interpretation of the relationship between different modes of supply has also tended to inhibit regional negotiations for Mode 4. In particular, we point to the neglect of the potential importance of independent suppliers of services. It is concluded that the ASEAN countries need to place more emphasis on regional priorities and problems in seeking more open worker flows within the region.

We look at the effect of the WTO on stabilizing international trade using both a fixed-effects and an event study approach. Our results show that WTO members experience lower trade volatilties in a predictable and integrated system. In addition, we focus on the trade volatility comovement among countries in a multilateral framework. Previous research has mainly focused on WTO membership in a bilateral trade framework, which only allows interactions between two trade partners without considering any possible influence from other countries. A bilateral trade framework does not fully capture the effect of WTO membership, nor does it investigate why the multilateral platform of the WTO should exist. With a unique setup estimating interactions among multiple trading dyads, we find strong evidence supporting positive correlation or comovement of trade volatilities across trading pairs. Such a comovement appears much stronger among WTO members than between WTO and non-WTO members. Due to the feedback mechanism among dyads in a multilateral framework, such as the WTO, bilateral trade stability may further stabilize the global trade. Our results remain robust to a battery of sensitivity checks.

Pessimism abounds in international economic law. The World Trade Organization (WTO) faces an uncertain future following its Ministerial Conference in Nairobi in 2015. International investment law is under attack in countries around the world, while mega-regional agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership are beset by world events, from the United States’ federal election to the unexpected Brexit outcome. Yet the appetite of numerous States to continue forging plurilateral trade and investment deals provides some cause for hope. Viewed alongside other institutional developments including consensus-building work at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, the potential arguably now exists for credible movement towards multilateral rules in investment law. While the WTO's current negotiating stalemate highlights the difficulties in reaching agreement among 164 Members, international trade law offers lessons for working towards multilateralism in the international investment law field. Alongside informal discussions about a world investment court, mega-regionals provide a vehicle for future multilateral investment rules, particularly through the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and the European Union, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership currently under negotiation in Asia.

Civil society organizations are often seen as playing a crucial role in helping to mitigate the exclusion of weaker states, giving voice to marginalized communities, and raising environmental and developmental concerns within the trade system. The politicization and demystification of the global trade agenda by civil society also opens up space for a more diverse set of actors to influence trade negotiations. This article examines the evolution of the WTO secretariat's engagement with civil society within this context and argues that the dominant mode of engagement, as manifest in WTO Public Forums and civil society participation in ministerial conferences, is no longer fit for purpose. Rather it reflects an outmoded strategy that once served to underscore the existence and value of the WTO as an international organization and works to neutralize political contestation and publicly promote the benefits of free trade. It is now in need of reform.

The number of sovereign states has steadily increased over the past few decades and is rapidly approaching two hundred. Many of these countries are small. The median country size in terms of population is around five million people. Tuvalu, the smallest state with a seat at the United Nations, has 11,000 people. The smallest country in the sample studied by Winters and Martins (W&M) is Niue, a self-governing country in free association with New Zealand, with only 2,000 inhabitants.

The tensions between the (quasi-judicial) dispute settlement process and the (political) diplomatic and treaty-making activities have intrigued me ever since I arrived in Geneva in December 2001. In the course of the six years during which I served as a member of the Appellate Body, my original doubts have grown into concerns. They are shared by prominent and well-informed observers. They have not only become the subject of a provocative and alarming book, but also found their way into one of the world's leading newspapers. It is therefore timely to discuss these issues widely, particularly in the context of the ‘Doha development agenda’ and more specifically the negotiations on improvements and clarifications of the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU).

This note looks at the WTO rules and procedures applicable to the implementation period of regional trade agreements on trade in goods. In addition, it highlights some differences between law and practice and explores the implications of these divergences. Where the GATT and subsequent instruments draw a distinction between ‘full’ regional trade agreements and ‘interim’ agreements, in practice all agreements are notified as ‘full’ agreements with an implementation period. It analyses the possibility that this deviation from the law, now sanctioned in the 2006 Transparency Decision, might have some practical implications for the regulation of regional trade agreements in the WTO.

In this paper we claim that, in the WTO Appellate Body (AB)'s ruling in US‒Countervailing Measures (China), the AB decision has not put in question the practice of imposing countervailing duties (CVDs). While the US has formally ‘lost’ the case, a change in the procedures and tests used to motivate the CVD will allow the US to continue using this policy tool on the specified products. From an economic point of view, this is not welcome news since CVDs have the standard distortionary effects of tariffs and could go against environmental goals. From a political-economy point of view, the CVDs in this case appear driven by pressure of domestic manufacturers of clean energy technology and products.

The negotiations under the aegis of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the creation of rules on domestic regulations affecting trade in services have entered a critical stage. Within a general atmosphere of reflection and reluctance characterizing the Doha negotiations, this is the only front in recent years in which tangible progress is evident. This paper critically analyses the potential rules that Members currently appear to support and attempts to identify their shortcomings as well as those modifications or clarifications which are necessary to improve the impact and efficacy of the forthcoming rules (so-called ‘disciplines on domestic regulation’ in the parlance used in the General Agreement on Trade in Services – GATS). At the heart of the paper lies a thought-provoking proposal for a necessity test applicable across services sectors. Arguably, only a necessity test can allow for the elimination of unnecessary barriers to trade in services and regulatory arbitrariness.

India–Solar Cells is one of a growing number of WTO disputes that highlight the continuing tensions between climate change polices (and renewable energy manufacturing initiatives in particular) and established multilateral trading rules. The United States alleged that Indian policies discriminated against foreign solar cell suppliers operating in the Indian market. The Appellate Body broadly rejected India's arguments to justify the measure either under Article III.8 public procurement derogations or as a general exception under ‘short supply’ and ‘compliance with laws and regulations’ provision of Article XX of the GATT. We argue that the Appellate Body was correct both on legal and economic grounds. The case does highlight the continuing need for clarity about the allowed parameters for climate change policies within the multilateral trade system.

Arguments against free trade are often couched in ethical terms. They usually describe the plight of those who lose from free trade, but seldom consider the costs of protectionism. This essay examines free trade from the perspective of several important ethical theories and concludes that free trade is consistent with each of them.

The two central issues in China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) were its economic size and the large role the state had played in economic decisions – the treatment of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) as central to addressing the latter point. While the Protocol of Accession imposed obligations on China that went beyond what was required of other WTO members, it has not been effective at resolving concerns about Chinese SOEs. This demonstrates, in part, the limitations in using the WTO as a vehicle to promote economic reform.

India's ambition of playing a prominent role in regional and global affairs has been particularly visible since the assumption of office by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May 2014. The ambition has resulted in India's external engagement, abandoning the posturing of non-alignment for a more proactive multi-alignment strategy. Its efforts to engage with major powers such as the US and China, as well as other global middle powers such as Japan, the UK, and Australia, have been positioned on rapid economic progress, enabled by one of the fastest rates of growth among major economies. Attempts to expand global strategic influence, a natural outcome of robust economic expansion, should have seen India pursuing an aggressive outward-oriented external trade policy for increasing its share in global trade. India, though, has shown a marked resistance to open trade, including being reluctant to engage in regional and bilateral trade negotiations. This paper examines the dichotomy between India's desire to play a prominent global role and its aversion to open trade policies. Attributing the inward-looking approach to lack of competitiveness of Indian industry, absence of domestic pro-trade constituencies, and discomfort in negotiating new-generation trade issues, the paper argues India's quest for greater global strategic influence might be adversely affected by its restrictive trade policies.

Oil prices fell from around $US110 per barrel in 2014 to less than $US50per barrel at the start of 2017. This put enormous pressure on government budgets within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. The focus of GCC economic policies quickly shifted to fiscal reform, including the removal of domestic subsidies on energy products. In this paper, we use a dynamic Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model to investigate the economic impact of the gradual removal of subsidies on refined petroleum and electricity, with specific reference to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).

Our study shows that removing subsidies eliminates a large distortion in the economy. This improves the efficiency of resource use, so that even though employment and capital in most years fall relative to baseline levels, real GDP rises. In addition, we show that fully-funded compensation payments offset the increases in energy prices, leaving economic welfare of the Saudi-national population little affected. Removing the energy subsidies leads to an improvement in the net volume of trade, while leading to a mixed outcome for industries.

The gas dual-pricing system in Russia has been a highly contentious issue in the context of the ongoing negotiations on the accession of Russia to the WTO. At present the domestic price for gas in Russia is set by the Government at a level several times lower than the freely negotiated export price. In the view of the European Union and other WTO Members such a policy is not permitted under WTO disciplines, while Russia persists in viewing the existing dual-pricing system as WTO consistent. The article pursues a legal assessment of the issue, demonstrating that although the Russian gas pricing system can be considered a subsidy, this subsidy is non-actionable under the WTO rules. This means that Russia has merit in its attempt to keep the gas pricing system in place after it accedes to the WTO.

Chapters relating to regulatory coherence or cooperation are likely to be significant features of new preferential trade agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). While the potential for harmonization of standards or institutional cooperation to impact on the regulatory autonomy of treaty parties has been well considered, this article focuses on those elements of regulatory coherence that relate to domestic processes for the development of regulations. It examines whether the adoption of ‘good regulatory practices’ in accordance with the TPP will help to ensure that measures states enact to protect non-economic interests (such as the environment or public health) are consistent with other key obligations of international trade and investment law. Although many elements of good regulatory practice mirror the criteria used to distinguish legitimate regulatory measures from disguised protectionism, there is no guarantee that a tribunal will come to the same conclusions as those reached during a domestic impact assessment.

The GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) is a highly complicated legal instrument and prone to various interpretations because of the embedded ambiguity. It should not come as a surprise that in the context of all disputes concerning services, WTO panels and the Appellate Body reached diametrically opposite conclusions on the same issues. Un-appealed panel reports, on the other hand, have not been welcome either. One of the major, if not the major, issue is the legal relationship between Arts. XVI and XVII GATS, which regulate market access. The manner in which this relationship has been interpreted inescapably leads to constructing the GATS as a move beyond negative integration. This is at odds with the intent of the founding fathers, the letter and the spirit of the GATS itself. Subjecting Art. XVI to Art. XVII GATS guarantees respect of the negative integration character of GATS. It thus avoids internationalizing issues that WTO Members want to keep in their domaine reservé. Counter-intuitively probably, it allows for more trade liberalization. Using the unfortunate US–Gambling report as an example, this report suggests an approach to understanding Art. XVI as a sub-set of Art. XVII GATS.

This paper argues that testing the empirical implications of existing theories about institutions yields rich insights into the postwar trade regime. Market-failure theory predicts that the GATT/WTO will exert its strongest impact on trade between its largest member states. A theory based on security externalities implies that a sizeable expansion of trade will also occur between a subset of the contracting parties that alliance ties link. An analysis of the data shows that the evidence is consistent with both theories, making clear the value added of taking explicitly into account the economics and politics that motivated the establishment of the postwar regime and that governed its subsequent operation.

The entry into force of the General Agreement on Trade in Services in 1995 marked a new stage in the history of the multilateral system. Given the peculiarities of services trade, the Agreement contains a variety of conceptual innovations, including its extension to transactions (modes of supply), beyond conventional cross-border trade, and various types of non-tariff restrictions. In turn, the new concepts needed time to be absorbed by the ministries and agencies involved, many of which might have been surprised by ‘their’ sectors being covered by a trade agreement and the ensuing government-internal coordination needs. Thus, understandably, the schedules that emerged from the Uruguay Round, which still account for the majority of current commitments, contain a variety of ill-specified entries. Such entries undermine the transparency and predictability of market conditions, thereby affecting trade and investment decisions in services. Poorly specified commitments also give rise to trade disputes. While the scheduling conventions agreed for the Doha Round provided for technical refinements that would leave the substance of commitments unchanged, this possibility was used far more sparingly than could have been expected. Moreover, additional flaws would have been introduced if some of the (preliminary) offers had entered into effect. The following discussion tries to explain the scope for refinements and develop a clearer picture of the commitments warranting correction – whether in the form of a final Doha Round outcome or through negotiation-independent action by WTO Members.