After US President Joe Biden took office, some believed he would take a different path from that of his predecessor and that the Trump years were over. However, one of President Biden’s first moves was to strengthen American protectionism by heightening the United States’s “Buy America” and “Buy American” requirements. With this, the American government procurement market started to close off even more, and Canadian suppliers, in turn, grew worried. Given the United States’s international procurement commitments and the specificity of the Buy American Act and the Buy America Policy, this article explores the pathways to favourable treatment of Canadian suppliers in keeping with applicable international trade rules.

In 2021, the United States challenged Canadian dairy import tariff rate quotas (TRQs) before the first state-to-state arbitration panel under Chapter 31 of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA). The panel held that the method of allocation of TRQs limited the US dairy industry’s access to the Canadian market and therefore violated CUSMA provisions. However, the panel also acknowledged that the Canadian supply management system for dairy products is a unique regulatory framework for production control, pricing mechanisms, and import control. This article explores the case as a test of the functioning of the improved CUSMA dispute settlement process and of Canada’s ability to protect its supply management system for dairy products from renewed pressure coming from its most important trade partner.

American trade policy under the Trump administration can be summed up in one expression, “America First,” which the US president himself has repeated many times. Driven by a rejection of multilateralism, the United States has adopted numerous measures designed to maintain or stimulate domestic industry or to tighten economic policies both domestically and towards foreign trading partners. Reflecting isolationist and nationalist economic theories, these measures are the anchor for a return of economic frontiers to the United States. Yet the United States is at the heart of globalization and cannot completely isolate itself without risking an economic meltdown. This is all the more true since it has been the driving force behind the creation of the multilateral trading system since the end of the Second World War. This change of economic vision by one of the world’s greatest powers can only be a turning point in the recent history of international economic relations. As such, one may wonder whether America First and the set of measures adopted in its name also foreshadow a phase of retreat for international trade law or whether, on the contrary, they are an opportunity for reform of an area of the law that has been struggling to evolve for several decades.

This article examines conditionalities in the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) in light of the European Communities – Conditions for the Granting of Tariff Preferences to Developing Countries (EC – Tariff Preferences) case at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The article largely undertakes this examination from the point of view of developing countries. It mainly examines the issue of discrimination in conditionalities since this was the principal question raised in the EC – Tariff Preferences case and makes suggestions regarding the regulation of conditionalities. In doing so, the article follows two trajectories: first, it makes suggestions for the WTO panels and Appellate Body, and, second, it makes suggestions for GSP donors, by analyzing the new European GSP + Scheme and by drawing inspiration from conditionalities in the loans granted by the World Bank.