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...

In December 2019 the WTO Appellate Body (AB) will cease to operate unless the United States stops blocking new appointments. The US argues the AB has exceeded its mandate and has indicated it wants to ensure that the AB performs the role originally assigned to it in 1995. This paper discusses...

This paper advocates changes in the corporate governance of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to reflect the decline in tariffs and other border restraints to commerce and the emerging challenges of advancing freer trade and better regulation cooperation in a world economy dominated by global...

Transparency obligations have undergone substantial transformations since the inception of the GATT in 1947. The paper begins by tracing the evolution of transparency principles during the WTO era. From an obligation to publish general laws affecting trade, the system now includes peer review by...

The WTO dispute settlement system is in crisis, endangering the future of the organization. The proximate reason for alarm is the dwindling number of Appellate Body (AB) members, the result of the United States blocking new appointments as the terms of sitting members expire. The AB crisis...

Private standards are increasing in number, and they affect trade, but their status in the WTO remains problematic. Standards-takers are typically countries with little bargaining power, who cannot affect their terms of trade and thus, even if they possess domestic antitrust laws, will find it...

The basic point I advocate in this paper is that the WTO Dispute Settlement System aims to curb unilateralism. No sanctions can be imposed, unless if the arbitration process is through, the purpose of which is to ensure that reciprocal commitments entered should not be unilaterally undone...

The WTO Appellate Body (AB) has produced a volume-wise important body of case law, which is often difficult to penetrate, never mind classify. Howse (2016) has attempted a very lucid taxonomy of the case law using the standard of review as benchmark for it. His conclusion is that the AB is quite...

By prohibiting subsidies that support illegal, unregulated or unreported fishing activities and contribute to unsustainable depletion of marine resources, the 2022 Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies (AFS) is the first WTO treaty to recognize that a specific trade policy instrument can have adverse...

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...