Literature Review: World Trade

Organization

By Vanshika Nikhanj
SUBJECT: LAW AND JUSTICE IN GLOBALIZED WORLD
ENROLLMENT NO: 00217747023
SUBMITTED TO: DR. RASHMI SALPEKAR
 Literature Review

1. What You Should Know About Globalization and the World Trade
Organization

Alan V. Deardorff, Robert M. Stern

First published: 17 December 2002

https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9396.00340

This paper reviews the essentials of economic globalization, as well as the major
institution that has recently gotten much of the credit and blame for it, the World
Trade Organization (WTO). It first defines globalization, which is just the
increasing economic integration of the world economy.It then asks who gains and
loss from globalization, drawing primarily upon economic theory to identify its
benefits and costs, and who within and among the world’s economies get these
benefits and costs. That part of the discussion concludes by asking briefly what can
and should be done about globalization. The second half of the paper turns to the
WTO, which was the focus of so much negative attention at its Seattle meeting in
December 1999. The authors try to clarify several misperceptions about what it
does, and why. Some groups gain and some lose from the WTO, some simply as a
byproduct of its role in facilitating globalization, but others from particular WTO
rules and procedures. The paper suggests what might be done to change both the
WTO itself and the public’s perceptions of it.
 2. Trading in the Twenty-First Century: Is There a Role for the World
Trade Organization?

Annual Review of Political Science

Vol. 20:545-564 (Volume publication date May 2017)

First published online as a Review in Advance on March 15, 2017

https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051215-023043

As the World Trade Organization (WTO) begins its third decade, its future is
uncertain. The initial expectation that the WTO would be the fulcrum for future
international trade agreements has not been met. At best, its tenure has had mixed
results. This review addresses the political consequences of WTO membership,
focusing on the rules and norms of the regime and why they have become less
functional over time; looks at the effectiveness of the WTO and the dispute
settlement system in encouraging trade and compliance with agreements; and
offers some general thoughts on the impact of shifting mass opinion on the virtue
of trade agreements and other stumbling blocks the WTO faces.
 3. Dispute Settlement in the World Trade Organization (WTO): An
Overview

Authors

Grimmett, Jeanne J.

Date Issued

2009-09-08

https://hdl.handle.net/1813/79383

Dispute settlement in the World Trade Organization (WTO) is carried out under
the WTO Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of
Disputes (DSU). In effect since January 1995, the DSU provides for consultations
between disputing parties, panels and appeals, and possible retaliation if a
defending party fails to comply with a WTO decision by an established deadline.
Automatic establishment of panels, adoption of panel and appellate reports, and
authorization of requests to retaliate, along with deadlines and improved
multilateral oversight of compliance, are aimed at producing a more expeditious
and effective system than had existed under the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT). To date, 398 complaints have been filed, approximately half
involving the United States as complainant or defendant. Expressing dissatisfaction
with WTO dispute settlement results in the trade remedy area, Congress, in the
Trade Act of 2002, directed the executive branch to address dispute settlement in
WTO negotiations. WTO Members have been negotiating DSU revisions in the
currently stalled Doha Development Round of trade negotiations but no final
agreement on the DSU has been reached. Use of the DSU has revealed procedural
gaps, particularly affecting the compliance phase of a dispute. These include a
failure to coordinate procedures for requesting retaliation with procedures for
tasking a WTO panel with determining whether a defending Member has complied
in a case and the absence of a procedure for withdrawing trade sanctions imposed
by a complaining Member where the defending Member believes it has fulfilled its
WTO obligations. As a result, disputing Members have entered into bilateral
agreements permitting retaliation and compliance panel processes to progress on
an agreed schedule and have initiated new dispute proceedings aimed at removing
retaliatory measures. Where a U.S. law or regulation is at issue in a WTO case, the
adoption by the WTO of a panel or Appellate Body report finding that the measure
violates a WTO agreement does not give the report direct legal effect in this
country; thus federal law is not affected until Congress or the executive branch, as
the case may be, takes action to remove the offending measure. Where a restrictive
foreign trade practice is at issue, Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 provides a
mechanism by which the United States Trade Representative (USTR) may
challenge the measure in a WTO dispute settlement proceeding and authorizes the
USTR to take retaliatory action if the defending Member has not complied with the
resulting WTO decision. Although Section 301 was challenged in the WTO on the
ground that it requires the USTR to act unilaterally in WTO-related trade disputes
in violation of DSU provisions requiring resort to multilateral WTO dispute
settlement, the United States was ultimately found not to be in violation of its DSU
obligations. H.R. 496 (Rangel) would create an Office of the Congressional Trade
Enforcer (CTE) that would, inter alia, investigate restrictive foreign trade practices
in light of WTO obligations and call on the USTR to initiate WTO dispute
proceedings where the CTE finds that WTO violations have occurred; express
congressional dissatisfaction with WTO dispute settlement decisions finding that
the U.S. practice of “zeroing” (i.e., disregarding non-dumped sales in the
calculation of dumping margins) violates the WTO Antidumping Agreement and
with decisions of the WTO Appellate Body generally; and place restrictions on the
Department of Commerce in implementing the revised antidumping methodology
that it adopted in 2007 in response to the WTO “zeroing” decisions. S. 363
(Snowe), would give the U.S. Court of International Trade exclusive jurisdiction to
review de novo certain USTR determinations under Section 301 of the Trade Act
of 1974, which may in some cases involve the initiation and conduct of WTO
disputes; the bill would also amend various Section 301 authorities themselves.
 4. Trade and health: how World Trade Organization (WTO) law affects
alcohol and public health

Ben Baumberg, Peter Anderson

First published:06 November 2008

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2008.02322.x

The alcohol field is becoming more aware of the consequences of world trade law
for alcohol policies. However, there is a need for greater clarity about the different
effects of trade on alcohol-related harm. WTO agreements contain genuine and
substantial risks to alcohol policies, and various ways of minimizing future risks
are suggested. However, the ‘chilling effect’ of mistakenly overestimating these
constraints should be avoided. Health policy makers should decide on which
policies to pursue based primarily on considerations of effectiveness, ethics and
politics rather than legality. As long as any effect of these policies on trade is
minimized, they are overwhelmingly likely to win any challenges at the WTO.
 5. Discursivity of Global Governance: Vestiges of “Democracy” in the
World Trade Organization

Michael Strange

Volume 36, Issue 3

https://doi.org/10.1177/0304375411418601

Global governance is neither democratic nor entirely undemocratic. For example,

within the World Trade Organization (WTO) formally all member-states have
equal power over decision making. The WTO’s dispute settlement body (DSB)
acts to enforce the rule of law over so-called power politics. The WTO’s secretariat
organizes regular meetings with civil society groups, and resources are spent on
facilitating transparency, including putting a vast amount of official documentation
online. However, there is large power asymmetry between WTO member-states.
This article sidesteps the classic response to such dilemmas, in which debate
hinges on how much or how little the institution is able to ameliorate realpolitik,
and considers the role the vestiges of “democracy” play in the WTO. Drawing on
the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, among others, the author argues
that the discourse of democracy embodied in the WTO expresses the wider process
through which the institution is legitimated as the body of global trade politics.
This has implications for understanding not only how global governance is
discursively formed but also whether civil society groups critiquing the WTO
threaten the WTO or, by accepting the premise of its predominance in global trade
politics, effectively strengthen it.
 6. Trade, Intellectual Property Rights, and the World Trade Organization

K. Saggi

Volume 1, Part B, 2016, Pages 433-512

https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.hescop.2016.04.012

This Article surveys the literature on international trade and the protection of
intellectual property rights (IPRs) in the global economy. The discussion is
organized around the major questions in the field. How does openness to trade
affect national incentives for patent protection? What is the rationale for
international coordination over patent policies? Given that countries are highly
asymmetric with respect to their technological capabilities, what incentives do
lagging countries have for enforcing IPRs and what are the consequences of
requiring them to do so? To what extent do empirical studies support the major
arguments for and against the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual
Property Rights (TRIPS)? Finally, can the structure of TRIPS—both in terms of
the core obligations it imposes on the WTO members and the flexibilities that it
provides them with respect to exhaustion policies and the use of compulsory
licensing—be reconciled with existing models of IPR protection in the global
economy?