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Full-Text Articles in Law
Informing Wto Reform: Dispute Settlement Performance, 1995-2020, Bernard M. Hoekman, Petros C. Mavroidis, Maarja Saluste
Informing Wto Reform: Dispute Settlement Performance, 1995-2020, Bernard M. Hoekman, Petros C. Mavroidis, Maarja Saluste
Faculty Scholarship
This article presents salient facts on the performance of WTO dispute settlement, using an updated dataset on cases adjudicated between 1992 and mid 2020. The dataset provides a comprehensive compilation of information on WTO disputes, including complainants, respondents and third parties; the substantive matters tabled; the WTO provisions invoked; the claims that are accepted or rejected by adjudicating bodies; the time involved to complete the consultation, panel and appeal (Appellate Body) stages; and the identity of panelists and how they were appointed. We highlight elements of the operation of the system that are salient to WTO reform discussions, while drawing …
Free Markets, State Involvement, And The Wto: Chinese State Owned Enterprises (Soes) In The Ring, Petros C. Mavroidis, Merit E. Jano
Free Markets, State Involvement, And The Wto: Chinese State Owned Enterprises (Soes) In The Ring, Petros C. Mavroidis, Merit E. Jano
Faculty Scholarship
The WTO has struggled with the treatment of nonmarket economies (NMEs). What was a nonissue in the original GATT (because of the homogeneity of participants) became quite an issue with the accession of formally centrally planned economies, which were not transformed to market economies, at least not in the eyes of the incumbents. Contracting this issue has proved to be so far always wanting, and leaving it to adjudicators has not produced good results either. With respect to Chinese SOEs this risks continuing to be an issue, since the contractually agreed deadline (2016) after which China should not be treated …
Space For Local Content Policies And Strategies, Lise Johnson
Space For Local Content Policies And Strategies, Lise Johnson
Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications
This paper explores both the role that local content measures can play in advancing sustainable development, and the impact that trade and investment treaties concluded over the past 20 years have had and will continue to have on the ability of governments to employ those tools. Certain local content measures had been restricted under the WTO due to wide agreement by negotiating parties that their costs outweigh their benefits. But the WTO also left a number of local content measures in governments’ policy toolboxes. As is discussed in this paper, however, that is changing, with the range of permissible actions …
Reaching Out For Green Policies: National Environmental Policies In The Wto Legal Order, Petros C. Mavroidis
Reaching Out For Green Policies: National Environmental Policies In The Wto Legal Order, Petros C. Mavroidis
Faculty Scholarship
The WTO does not squarely address the issue of jurisdictional ambit of national policies (affecting trade). And yet, absent some agreement as to what trading nations can and cannot do, the WTO loses much of its effectiveness. In the absence of explicit regulation of the issue in the WTO contract, one would reasonably expect WTO Members to behave in line with the postulates governing allocation of jurisdiction embedded in public international law. WTO practice evidences neither an explicit acceptance nor a refusal of these rules.
A Turquoise Mess: Green Subsidies, Blue Industrial Policy And Renewable Energy: The Case For Redrafting The Subsidies Agreement Of The Wto, Aaron Cosbey, Petros C. Mavroidis
A Turquoise Mess: Green Subsidies, Blue Industrial Policy And Renewable Energy: The Case For Redrafting The Subsidies Agreement Of The Wto, Aaron Cosbey, Petros C. Mavroidis
Faculty Scholarship
Canada-Renewable Energy presented the WTO Panel and Appellate Body (AB) with a novel issue: at the heart of the dispute was a measure adopted by the province of Ontario whereby producers of renewable energy would be paid a premium relative to conventional power producers. Some WTO Members complained that the measure was a prohibited subsidy because payments were conditional upon using Canadian equipment for the production of renewable energy. The AB gave them right only in part: it found that a local content requirement had indeed been imposed, but also found that it lacked evidence to determine whether a subsidy …
Multilateral Environmental Agreements In The Wto: Silence Speaks Volumes, Henrik Horn, Petros C. Mavroidis
Multilateral Environmental Agreements In The Wto: Silence Speaks Volumes, Henrik Horn, Petros C. Mavroidis
Faculty Scholarship
This study contributes to the debate concerning the appropriate role of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) in in WTO dispute settlement. Its distinguishing feature is that it seeks to address this relationship in light of the reason why the parties have chosen to separate their obligations into two bodies of law without providing an explicit nexus between them. The basic conclusion is that legislators’ silence concerning this relationship should speak volumes to WTO adjudicating bodies: MEAs should not be automatically understood as imposing legally binding obligations on WTO Members, but could be used as sources of factual information.
In The Shadow Of The Dsu: Addressing Specific Trade Concerns In The Wto Sps And Tbt Committees, Henrik Horn, Petros C. Mavroidis, Erik Wijkström
In The Shadow Of The Dsu: Addressing Specific Trade Concerns In The Wto Sps And Tbt Committees, Henrik Horn, Petros C. Mavroidis, Erik Wijkström
Faculty Scholarship
The paper argues that focusing only on disputes formally raised in the WTO Dispute Settlement system underestimates the extent of trade conflict resolution within the WTO. Both the SPS and TBT Committees address a significant number of ‘specific trade concerns’ (STCs) that in the overwhelming majority of cases do not become formal disputes. The STCs address differences between Members concerning the conformity of national measures in the SPS and TBT areas with these agreements. It appears as if Committee work on STCs significantly helps defuse potential trade frictions concerning national policies in the covered areas.
The Legal And Economic Principles Of World Trade Law: National Treatment, Gene M. Grossman, Henrik Horn, Petros C. Mavroidis
The Legal And Economic Principles Of World Trade Law: National Treatment, Gene M. Grossman, Henrik Horn, Petros C. Mavroidis
Faculty Scholarship
The primary objective of most trade agreements is to restrain members' use of trade policies for protectionist purposes. But it would be pointless to restrict the application of border instruments without regulating the possible use of domestic policies for protectionist purpose. To this end, most agreements include an obligation for National Treatment (NT) of foreign products. The NT provision in the GATT appears in Art. III, which applies to most government actions that have impact trade. It requires that imported products be treated as favorably by domestic policy as similar, indigenous products. This study offers suggestions based on legal and …
One (Firm) Is Not Enough: A Legal-Economic Analysis Of Ec-Fasteners, Chad P. Brown, Petros C. Mavroidis
One (Firm) Is Not Enough: A Legal-Economic Analysis Of Ec-Fasteners, Chad P. Brown, Petros C. Mavroidis
Faculty Scholarship
The WTO’s Appellate Body (AB) dealt with a number of issues for the first time in the Report of EC-Fasteners. Importantly, the AB discussed the consistency of the European Union (EU) regulation with the multilateral rules on the conditions for deviating from the obligation to calculate individual dumping margins. Although China formally won the argument, the AB may have opened the door to treat China as a non-market economy (NME) even beyond 2016 when China’s NME-status was thought to expire under the terms of China’s 2001 WTO Accession Protocol. The AB further dealt with numerous other issues ranging from statistical …
The World Trade Organization: A Legal And Institutional Analysis, Anu Bradford
The World Trade Organization: A Legal And Institutional Analysis, Anu Bradford
Faculty Scholarship
The law of the WTO can be complex and the intricacies of the WTO hard to grasp even by someone who has spent years studying this area of law. In providing a clear, well-structured and highly accessible introduction to the legal and institutional aspects of the WTO, Jan Wouters and Bart De Meester offer a refreshingly uncomplicated book that walks the reader through the basic legal doctrine underlying international trade.
The Case For Tradable Remedies In Wto Dispute Settlement, Kyle Bagwell, Petros C. Mavroidis, Robert W. Staiger
The Case For Tradable Remedies In Wto Dispute Settlement, Kyle Bagwell, Petros C. Mavroidis, Robert W. Staiger
Faculty Scholarship
In response to concerns over the efficacy of the WTO dispute settlement system, especially in regard to its use by developing countries, Mexico has tabled a proposal to introduce tradable remedies within the Dispute Settlement Understanding. The idea is that a country that has won cause before the WTO, and who is facing non-implementation by the author of the illegal act but feels that its own capacity to exercise its right to impose countermeasures is unlikely to lead to compliance, can auction off that right. The attractiveness of this idea is that it offers an additional possibility to injured WTO …
The Case For Auctioning Countermeasures In The Wto, Kyle Bagwell, Petros C. Mavroidis, Robert W. Staiger
The Case For Auctioning Countermeasures In The Wto, Kyle Bagwell, Petros C. Mavroidis, Robert W. Staiger
Faculty Scholarship
A major accomplishment of the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations in creating the World Trade Organization (WTO) was the introduction of new dispute settlement procedures. These procedures were intended to provide a significant step forward, relative to GATT, in the settling of trade disputes, in large part by ensuring that violations of WTO commitments would be met with swift retaliation ("suspension of concessions") by the affected trading partners. While the dispute settlement procedures of the WTO indeed represent a considerable improvement over those in GATT, nine years of experience under the new procedures suggests that significant problems of enforcement remain …
The Byrd Amendment Is Wto-Illegal: But We Must Kill The Byrd With The Right Stone, Jagdish N. Bhagwati, Petros C. Mavroidis
The Byrd Amendment Is Wto-Illegal: But We Must Kill The Byrd With The Right Stone, Jagdish N. Bhagwati, Petros C. Mavroidis
Faculty Scholarship
On 16 January 2003, the WTO Appellate Body issued its report on United States – Continued Dumping And Subsidy Offset Act Of 2000 (WTO Doc. WT/DS217 and 234/AB/R). In this report, the Appellate Body condemned the so-called US Byrd Amendment by finding that it was inconsistent with the US obligations under the WTO Agreements on Antidumping (AD) and Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM).
It's A Question Of Market Access, Kyle W. Bagwell, Robert W. Staiger, Petros C. Mavroidis
It's A Question Of Market Access, Kyle W. Bagwell, Robert W. Staiger, Petros C. Mavroidis
Faculty Scholarship
In this paper, we argue that market access issues associated with the question of the optimal mandate of the World Trade Organization should be separated from nonmarket access issues. We identify race-to-the-bottom and regulatory-chill concerns as market access issues and suggest that the WTIO should address these concerns. We then describe ways that WTO principles and procedures might be augmented to do so. As for nonmarket access issues, we argue that as a general matter these are best handled outside the WTO, and that, while implicit links might be encouraged, explicit links between the WTO and other labor and environmental …
Economic Development, Competition Policy, And The World Trade Organization, Bernard Hoekman, Petros C. Mavroidis
Economic Development, Competition Policy, And The World Trade Organization, Bernard Hoekman, Petros C. Mavroidis
Faculty Scholarship
At the recent WTO ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar, WTO members called for the launch of negotiations on disciplines relating to competition, on the basis of explicit consensus on modalities to be agreed at the 5th WTO ministerial in 2003. Discussions in WTO since 1997 have revealed little support for ambitious multilateral action. Proponents of WTO antitrust disciplines currently propose an agreement that is limited to ‘core principles’ – nondiscrimination, transparency, and provisions banning ‘hard core’ cartels. We argue that an agreement along such lines will create compliance costs for developing countries while not addressing the anticompetitive behavior of firms …