President Obama's major trade initiatives, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and obtaining fast-track trade negotiating authority from Congress, have run into a buzz saw of opposition, which has derailed prospects for U.S. trade liberalization for...

How do countries settle disputes in the shadow of the law? Even in the presence of legalized dispute settlement, countries still rely on diplomatic channels to resolve conflicts. But it can be difficult to assess diplomacy's impact on dispute resolution, because those channels tend to be opaque....

This contribution provides a cost-benefit analysis in a partial equilibrium framework to investigate the welfare consequences of a prohibitive regulatory non-tariff measure (NTM) in the form of a sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measure aimed at a foreign product with perceived negative...

The Brazil-Taxation dispute concerns the complaints taken to the World Trade Organisation by the European Union and Japan against seven different Brazilian industrial subsidy programmes. One concerned the automotive sector and represents a clear case of policies dictated by strong domestic...

This paper studies the under-explored yet critical role of WTO's regular bodies, particularly focusing on the discussions of "trade concerns" within the Goods Council, its subsidiary bodies, as well as the General Council. These discussions are pivotal for the governance of international trade...

The Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM) received much scholarly attention when it was first established in 1989, but has been overshadowed of late by dispute settlement processes. This paper examines the relationship between barriers to trade that are flagged by the World Trade Organization's...

Rise of law in foreign trade politics -- Antidumping clashes with the United States -- Legality in safeguard disputes with China -- The burgeoning intellectual property agenda -- Investment rules in preferential trade arrangements -- The expansion of aggressive legalism

The subject of this paper is Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 of the United States, a statute that for the past 35 years has allowed the U.S. to unilaterally handle its trade disputes. More specifically, the paper examines the constraining and supporting effects of the multilateral trading...