The WTO has not been able to recover since the collapse of the Doha Round in July 2008. Several ministerial conferences including the Buenos Aires meeting in December 2017 failed to reach agreement. The US Trump Administration launched a campaign to reform the WTO in 2018 and 2019. This book...

Regional trade agreements (RTAs) have become an indelible feature of the international trading landscape. Most, if not all, RTAs contain provisions that establish procedures for resolving disputes among their signatory members. Yet, the design and functioning of these dispute settlement...

There were 288 regional trade agreements in force at the end of 2018, approximately one quarter (27%) of which included digital trade provisions. These e-commerce chapters have evolved from simple statements, to more comprehensive attempts to cultivate digital trade. This article tests the...

Peer pressure is a well-known phenomenon, believed responsible for everything from teenage experimentation and angst to the cliff-diving habits of lemmings. But peer pressure is less commonly thought of as a motivation for a state to act - or fail to act - in the international trade arena. The...

This paper addresses the paradox of trade dispute settlement in which countries allocate resources to the creation of dispute settlement mechanisms in regional trade agreements even as the WTO's system has become the primary forum for the arbitration of state-to-state disputes. I argue that...

This paper hypothesizes that the inclusion of provisions for the settlement of disputes in regional agreements may ultimately enhance, rather than disrupt, the centrality of the WTO's dispute settlement system. Using a dataset that organizes exclusion clauses and special provisions for dispute...

In May 2012, the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization (WTO) issued a report on the labeling of tuna in a dispute between the United States and Mexico, known as the US — Tuna II (Mexico) case. The case has attracted a fair amount of attention, but not on the fact that it raised, at an...

In October 2018, Trump, alongside his Mexican and Canadian counterparts, delivered what many have dubbed “NAFTA 2.0.” But the new U.S.–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) adopts not only a new name, but also a new approach to ISDS within its Chapter 14. On November 30, 2018 the leaders of...

In 2015, the Heads of State and Government of COMESA, the EAC and SADC agreed to establish the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) extending from Cape to Cairo, encompassing all twenty-six members of the three groupings. While the TFTA negotiations are ongoing, it is necessary that member states...