There are two widely accepted explanations of why politically motivated governments make trade agreements. There is an informal explanation, which I shall call the ‘practitioners' story’, even though it is most economists' informal view as well. And there is a formal explanation in the economics literature, which I shall call the ‘standard model’, referring to the basic structure shared by the Bagwell–Staiger and Grossman–Helpman models. Unfortunately, the practitioners' story and the standard model contradict each other at every crucial point. For example, in the practitioners' story, trade agreements are about reducing politically motivated protectionism; and getting an agreement depends on political support from exporters. But in the standard model, trade agreements never reduce such protectionism; and politics plays no role in securing an agreement. This paper expounds the contradictions between the practitioners' story and the standard model, which have gone largely unremarked. It refutes suggestions by defenders of the standard model that the contradictions are illusory. It identifies the different assumptions made by the two explanations that generate the contradictions. It gives reasons for skepticism about the standard model. And it discusses why all of this matters.

This paper sets out to examine the pattern of WTO committee chair appointments by nationality since the WTO's founding in 1995. Chairs of the General Council (GC), subsidiary and negotiating committees play important roles in the outcome of trade negotiations and in administrative and implementation issues in Geneva. The GC selects most committee chairs, and must consider the balance of member representation and the quality of the candidates in its choices. Regression results indicate that the selection of a chair by nationality generally reflects the country's mission size in Geneva, the country's years of experience as a WTO member, and its economic interests in trade. The experience of individuals and continuity in committee leadership also appear to play important roles. Among developing countries, emerging markets (EMs) tend to have the largest proportional representation. The GC thus appears to follow a human capital model of chair selection, geographical constraints and especially development status balance considerations. Continued investments among all WTO members, but especially EM and other developing countries, in WTO representation and leadership capacity will be required in order to promote multilateral trade liberalization in the future.

Trade-restrictiveness is a familiar concept across various provisions and agreements of the World Trade Organization (WTO), but its precise meaning remains vague. In many WTO disputes, the existence or degree of trade-restrictiveness of a challenged measure is simply assumed or addressed in a few brief sentences. Yet whether a measure is more trade-restrictive than necessary, or more trade-restrictive than a proposed alternative measure, is crucial to the legality of a range of measures currently in place around the world, some under challenge in the WTO. A careful analysis of the existing case law and treaty text – focusing on Article 2.2 of the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade and the general exceptions in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 and the General Agreement on Trade in Services – demonstrates that while the existence of discrimination is likely to restrict trade, discrimination is not necessary to establish trade-restrictiveness, which also necessarily arises from direct barriers to market access such as import bans. In the absence of an explicit barrier to imports, a WTO panel is likely to focus on the extent to which a challenged measure negatively affects the competitive opportunities of imported products vis-à-vis domestic products.

Many governments provide subsidies to shift from ‘dirty’ but cheap fossil fuels to ‘clean’ but expensive renewable energy. Recently, public incentives in the renewable energy sector have been challenged through both dispute settlement procedures of the World Trade Organization and domestic countervailing duty investigations. One may expect that trade frictions in this field will intensify over time. This article argues that the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures – a multilateral trade treaty on subsidization and anti-subsidy measures – should be revised to give more policy space to national authorities in implementing their low-carbon programmes. The Appellate Body made a few climate-friendly interpretations in Canada–Renewable Energy/Canada–Feed-In Tariff Program. It is now members’ turn to carry out meaningful rule-making reforms. This article explores some ways to ‘green’ the existing disciplines.

In this article, we explore the conditions under which firms engage in transnational lobbying and foreign venue shopping in the framework of WTO dispute settlement. Classical World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement cases mostly originate in domestic firms instigating their public authorities to bring a complaint against foreign trade barriers incompatible with WTO law. In recent years, however, we have witnessed the rise of WTO cases in which firms get a foreign government to file a case against its own authorities. By analysing transnational lobbying by EU firms in the WTO footwear case filed by China against the EU, and by US firms in the WTO gambling case Antigua brought against the US, we highlight the increasing resemblance between trade disputes and investment disputes.

(1) The procedure connected to the Advance Sworn Import Declaration (Declaración Jurada Anticipada de Importación, DJAI), required by the Argentine Government since February 2012 for most imports of goods into Argentina; and (2) the imposition by Argentine authorities on economic operators of one or more trade-related requirements (TRRs) as a condition to import into Argentina or to obtain certain benefits.

Various aspects of 17 countervailing duty investigations conducted by the United States' Department of Commerce (USDOC) from 2007 through 2012.

US laws and practices related to the imposition of anti-dumping measures against imports of certain shrimp products from Viet Nam. In particular, the dispute concerned various aspects of certain administrative reviews and a sunset review regarding such measures. The dispute also concerned certain US laws regarding the implementation of DSB recommendations and rulings.

Yukos conducted its sales through a network of companies registered in a number of low-tax regions in Russia. Following tax investigation, Russian authorities found it had underpaid taxes and held it liable for unpaid taxes, fines, and penalties of USD 24.18 billion. The tax investigations were accompanied by criminal proceedings against and the subsequent imprisonment of some of Yukos's senior management. Following Yukos's unsuccessful attempts to settle its tax debt, the Russian tax authorities sold its core production facility, YNG, in order to satisfy their tax payment demands. YNG was eventually acquired by the state-owned Rosneft. Yukos then went into bankruptcy, with the Russian State owning 97.67 per cent of the claims against it and receiving 99.71 per cent of the bankruptcy proceeds.

The award in the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) case Micula v. Romania was released to the parties at the very end of 2013. It is in 2014, however, that the case gained notoriety as the European Commission (EC) started actions to fight against the enforcement of the award.