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Article contents
Remarks by Kathleen Claussen
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 March 2022
Extract
International trade dispute settlement today encompasses many modes of operation across several different fora. Given this diversity, it is difficult to say whether there is a clear “2.0” version of trade dispute settlement. While such a label may suggest that the World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) is the “1.0,” the WTO system is in fact a revision to the prior General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) enforcement arrangement. The state of play today for trade dispute settlement belies any clear label apart from what we might try to use to capture a variegated landscape that is constantly in motion. States continue to experiment with compliance and enforcement tools, such that singular directional statements are insufficient to capture what is happening in practice.
- Type
- International Trade Dispute Settlement 2.0
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The American Society of International Law.
Footnotes
This panel was convened at 12:30 p.m., Thursday, March 25, 2021, by its moderator Kathleen Claussen of the University of Miami School of Law, who introduced the panelists: Cherise Valles of the Advisory Centre on WTO Law; Geraldo Vidigal of the University of Amsterdam; Heng Wang of the University of New South Wales School of Law; and Alan Yanovich of Akin Gump LLP.
References
1 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), Oct. 30, 1947, 61 Stat. A-11, 55 UNTS 194. While the GATT panel system suffered from a number of flaws, it nevertheless was an attempt at international trade dispute settlement in the first instance.
2 See Kathleen Claussen, The Experimental Evolution of Trade Law, in The Future of International Law (David Sloss ed., 2021) (discussing the ways that states have experimented with trade tools). Constituents and the press use language that reflects this experimentation by referring to new “innovations” and how they are to be “tested.” See, e.g., Thomas Kaplan, Mexican Factories Accused of Labor Abuses, Testing U.S.M.C.A., N.Y. Times (May 10, 2021).
3 See Gregory Shaffer, et al., The Extensive (But Fragile) Authority of the WTO Appellate Body, 79 L. & Contemp. Probs. 237 (2016).
4 For more on the MPIA and its limitations as well as its benefits, see Simon Lester, Can Interim Appeal Arbitration Preserve the WTO Dispute System?, Cato Inst. (Sept. 1, 2020).
5 WorldTradeLaw.Net, List of FTA Complaints (Mar. 4, 2021).
6 See, e.g., Panel of Experts Proceeding Constituted Under 13.15 of the EU-Korea Free Trade Agreement, Report of the Panel of Experts (Jan. 20, 2021), available at https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2021/january/tradoc_159358.pdf.
7 See Trade's Experimental Compliance Mechanisms, in International Economic Dispute Settlement: Demise or Transformation? (Manfred Elsig, et al. eds., 2021).
8 Peter Goodman, Trump Just Pushed the World Trade Organization Toward Irrelevance, N.Y. Times (Mar. 23, 2018), at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/business/trump-world-trade-organization.html.
9 See, e.g., David Lynch, Even as Supply Lines Strain, Biden Is in No Rush to Scrap Trump's Steel Tariffs, Wash. Post (Apr. 17, 2021), at https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/04/17/biden-steel-tariffs-trade; Erik Brattberg, Transatlantic Relations After Biden's First 100 Days, Carnegie Endowment for Int'l Peace (May 6, 2021), at https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/05/06/transatlantic-relations-after-biden-s-first-100-days-pub-84472.
10 WTO Members Discuss Use of Virtual Platforms During COVID-19 Lockdown, World Trade Org. (Apr. 17, 2020), at https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news20_e/hod_17apr20_e.htm.