The Custom-House

"The Case Against Reforming the WTO Enforcement Mechanism"

Simon Lester over at the International Economic Law and Policy Blog reports (Public International Law and Economics, January 14, 2008) that the Illinois Law Review has published the papers from a December 2006 symposium on "Public International Law and Economics."   There are an introduction, eight papers and, in many cases, comments on the papers - all online.

Jide Nzelibe of the Northwestern School of Law, argues against reforming the WTO's procedures for enforcing trade commitments made by its members:

"In The Case Against Reforming the WTO Enforcement Mechanism, Jide Nzelibe refutes two leading proposals for altering WTO enforcement. He argues that both “incentive-compatible” and “user-friendly” enforcement reforms threaten to introduce dangers of its own which outweigh the problems of the present enforcement mechanism.  Comments by Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann and Christian Tietje follow."

Did the U.S. Cede Sovereignty to the WTO?

Dani Rodrik wonders why the U.S. has chosen to cede so much sovereignty to the WTO over trade (Isn't the WTO just so amazing?, Dec 20).  I think its wrong to say there has been a significant surrender of sovereignty:

The WTO's 2007 World Trade Report is out

The WTO released its fifth annual World Trade Report yesterday.  These reports describe recent developments in international trade and include surveys of special topics.

How is the U.S. doing in WTO litigation?

The U.S. has been doing pretty well in the WTO's dispute resolution system (measuring success by simple win-loss counts). 

The U.S. Trade Representative maintains a more or less up-to-date scorecard: Snapshot of WTO Cases Involving the United States (update July 31, 2007). 

Here's a pie-chart summarizing the USTR's score-keeping.  The chart shows cases in which decisions have been reached, or the parties have come to an agreement that short-circuited the ongoing settlement process (resolved).  There are many cases still in the pipeline.  Blue cases were resolved through negotiation, green cases were won by the U.S. on USTR-identified core issues, and red cases are those the U.S. lost.

   

On balance, the U.S. seems to be doing fairly well.  In the overwhelming number of cases in which we are complaining we have won on the core issues, or have obtained a resolution through negotiation.  We're not doing so well when we're the defendent.  We've lost about half on the core issues, and won or negotiated solutions to about half.  This is a crude measure of success and failure; it doesn't address the relative importance of the different cases, or the nature of the negotiated solutions. 

On the other hand, Brandon Wu, at Public Citizen's "Eyes on Trade," thinks the U.S. is a big loser in WTO dispute settlement outcomes: We are the "world's biggest loser" (August 27):