The Trade and Tariff Act of 1984: From the Customs Treatment of Manhole Covers to the Return of Goods From Outer Space

The Trade and Tariff Act of 1984 (TTA) began life as a Miscellaneous Tariff Bill, but became the vehicle to which other, more significant, trade measures were attached

The Capture of the Antidumping Law

PROTECTIONIsM. By Jagdish N. Bhagwati.t Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1988. Pp. xiii, 147. $16.95 (Hardcover). International economists, Jagdish Bhagwati writes, have long been frustrated by the dissonance between the elegance of their irrefutable demonstration of the advantages of free trade and the inelegance with which practical politics embraces protection. International trade lawyers, for their part, frequently have been frustrated by the apparent ivory tower impracticality of many of those same international economists. To those in the arena opposing protection, the arguments of some economists can appear so dismissive of the very real human concerns of those who seek protection as to be irrelevant at best and counterproductive at worst

The WTO Legal System: Sources of Law

The WTO is the product of an international agreement, and that agreement and the agreements annexed to it constitute the basic source of WTO law. The reports of panels and the Appellate Body, however, add a growingly important gloss to those texts. Most WTO disputes will be resolved primarily, if not solely, with reference to the texts and to prior reports, and in this sense the WTO legal system may be thought of as largely self-contained. But if the WTO legal system is largely self-contained, it is not entirely self-contained. To the contrary, it is an important part of the larger system of public international law, as reflected not only by the interpretive principles that are brought to bear on its texts, which are explicitly those of public international law, but also by its increasing recourse to the other traditional sources of public international law: custom, the teachings of publicists, general principles of law, and other international instruments, particularly those incorporated by reference into the the WTO and its agreements. Public international law has clearly made an important contribution to WTO law. It is not yet clear that the reverse will be true, that other international tribunals will begin to see the WTO, as reflected in its adopted reports, as a source of law. Given the growing quantity and high overall quality of those reports, however, it seems likely that it is only a matter of time before this recognition begins to take place, particularly with regard to evidentiary and procedural issues that could have wider application

No. 4 - Agriculture and the WTO: Subsidies in the Cross Hairs

September 2003 saw trade talks pursuing the Doha Development Agenda at the Cancún WTO Ministerial Meeting collapse, primarily over the disagreements between rich and developing countries regarding agriculture. Despite the great pessimism that ensued, on August 1, 2004, WTO negotiators from 147 countries announced a breakthrough in negotiations to liberalize trade in agricultural products. The most striking aspect of this new framework agreement is the proposed elimination of agricultural subsidies by rich countries in return for developing countries opening up their markets to more imports. At the same time, WTO dispute resolution panels have delivered stunning decisions against the U.S. cotton subsidy program and the European Union\u27s sugar subsidies. Clearly agriculture trade policy will be a pivotal issue determining the failure or success of the Doha round. This conference featured noted experts from senior levels of government, the private sector, and the legal profession addressing current developments in multilateral negotiations and the WTO cases on agriculture and analyzing their impact on the future of the world agricultural market. It was presented on November 16, 2004, at the University of Georgia School of Law by the Dean Rusk Center–International, Comparative, and Graduate Legal Studies and the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

The WTO as a Legal System

Part I describes Hart\u27s view of the primary and secondary rules that are necessary for the existence of a modern legal system. Part II examines his view of international law, as resembling a primitive legal system. Part III evaluates the GATT legal system according to Hart\u27s criteria for a modern legal system, while Part IV will do the same for the World Trade Organization (“WTO”). Part V will conclude with an evaluation of the WTO legal system