Trade Justice Delayed Is Trade Justice Denied: How to Make WTO Dispute Settlement Faster and More Effective
Until recently, the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement process had served as a beacon of hope for being one of the fastest and most effective international dispute settlement systems in the history of the world. Today, with the process so much slower, governments can have a three-year or longer “free pass” to implement illegal protectionist measures while litigation drags on. A new brief by Cato scholars James Bacchus and Simon Lester proposes reforms to speed up the process.
Closing Pandora’s Box: The Growing Abuse of the National Security Rationale for Restricting Trade
Over its first two years, the Trump administration has aggressively reshaped U.S. trade policy. One of its most controversial initiatives is the expansive use of national security to justify imposing tariffs and quotas. Internationally, many U.S. trading partners responded immediately to the tariffs with tariffs of their own, and both the U.S. tariffs and the retaliatory tariffs are the subject of litigation that will test the limits of the WTO’s dispute settlement process and the trading system itself. In a new paper, Cato scholars Simon Lester and Huan Zhu suggest an alternative mechanism to handle these issues.
Trump’s First Trade Deal: The Slightly Revised Korea‑U.S. Free Trade Agreement
While the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement has received far more attention, a lesser-known U.S. trade deal has also been reworked. The renegotiation of the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) provides a useful example of Trump’s trade dealmaking in practice. In a new paper, Simon Lester, Inu Manak, and Kyounghwa Kim demonstrate how the renegotiation made only minor changes to the agreement and could be taken to mean that the reality of Trump’s trade policy may not always match the rhetoric.
Experts
Subtopics
- Agriculture
- Antidumping, CVD, Safeguards
- General U.S. Trade Policy
- Globalization, Value Chains, FDI
- Jones Act
- Manufacturing and Industrial Policy
- Services Trade and Non-Tariff Barriers
- Trade Agreements and the WTO
- Trade Myths
- Trade Policy Prescriptions
- Trade Politics
- Trade Theory, Philosophy, and Morality
- Trans-Atlantic Trade
- Trans-Pacific Trade