Discontentment is growing such that governments, and notably that of China, are increasingly providing subsidies to companies outside their jurisdiction, ‘buying their way’ into other countries’ markets and undermining fair competition therein as they do so. In response, the European Union recently published a proposal to tackle such foreign subsidization in its own market. This article asks whether foreign subsidies can instead be addressed under the existing rules of the World Trade Organization, and, if not, whether those rules allow States to take matters into their own hands and act unilaterally. The authors shed light on these issues and provide preliminary guidance on how to design a response to foreign subsidization which is consistent with international trade law.

The United States and Canada have a long-standing series of disputes over softwood lumber that until now have focused on alleged subsidies and countervailing duties (CVDs). The United States changed things up this time around and the US Department of Commerce (USDOC) found dumping after applying the Differential Pricing Methodology to softwood lumber from Canada. The panel found that the USDOC erroneously aggregated export price differences when applying the differential pricing methodology (DPM), but departed from the WTO Appellate Body's previous ruling in US–Washing Machines regarding the use of zeroing and the inclusion of differential prices under Article 2.4.2 of the Anti-Dumping Agreement. To date, the United States and Canada have not been able to resolve the long-standing softwood lumber dispute, and this time the focus shifts from subsidies and countervailing duties to anti-dumping duties. It remains to be seen what happens in this specific dispute on appeal – if, and when, the WTO Appellate Body starts to function again. It will also be interesting to see whether this panel decision encourages parties to argue for, and future panels to permit departures from, Appellate Body rulings with which they disagree.

There is a broad consensus that global electronic commerce needs the World Trade Organization (WTO) trade rules to govern it. The current mandate of the WTO is merely to examine the various trade-related aspects of e-commerce. Nevertheless, in recent years, some WTO members have put forward a proposal to begin negotiations for global e-commerce rules which was impeded due to the differing positions of developed and developing members. This paper examines the positions of the United States, the European Union, Japan, and China on the e-commerce multilateral rules negotiation issues. It then takes a look at the prospect of the WTO being able to reach an agreement on e-commerce. The analysis shows that the United States and the European Union have varying views on consumer privacy, information protection, and internet taxation. Although Japan sides with the United States on these issues and China is on the same page as the European Union regarding consumer privacy, China holds a different position from the United States and the European Union on the other two matters. China is not making commitments on data localization, free data flow, and forced transfer of source codes. Therefore, the outlook of the current e-commerce talks is not favorable for concluding WTO e-commerce agreements.

This article introduces a novel database on investment treaties called the Electronic Database of Investment Treaties (EDIT). We describe the genesis of the database and what makes EDIT the most comprehensive and systematic database to date. What stands out besides the coverage is that treaties are all provided in one single language (English) and in one single format that is machine-readable. In the second part of the article, we provide selected illustrations on how the data can be used to address research questions in international law, international political economy, and international relations by applying text-as-data methods and by extracting and visualizing data based on EDIT.

India's ambition of playing a prominent role in regional and global affairs has been particularly visible since the assumption of office by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May 2014. The ambition has resulted in India's external engagement, abandoning the posturing of non-alignment for a more proactive multi-alignment strategy. Its efforts to engage with major powers such as the US and China, as well as other global middle powers such as Japan, the UK, and Australia, have been positioned on rapid economic progress, enabled by one of the fastest rates of growth among major economies. Attempts to expand global strategic influence, a natural outcome of robust economic expansion, should have seen India pursuing an aggressive outward-oriented external trade policy for increasing its share in global trade. India, though, has shown a marked resistance to open trade, including being reluctant to engage in regional and bilateral trade negotiations. This paper examines the dichotomy between India's desire to play a prominent global role and its aversion to open trade policies. Attributing the inward-looking approach to lack of competitiveness of Indian industry, absence of domestic pro-trade constituencies, and discomfort in negotiating new-generation trade issues, the paper argues India's quest for greater global strategic influence might be adversely affected by its restrictive trade policies.

Using detailed information on policy interventions by US sub-national governments between 2009 and 2019, the contribution of such public bodies to Sino-US geopolitical rivalry is examined, in particular since President Trump took office in 2017. While US sub-national governments accounted for 28% of all US policy interventions that harmed Chinese commercial interests, awarding firm-specific subsidies in 88% of cases, the timing and sectoral incidence of such intervention suggests that economic statecraft considerations could only be part of the explanation for their actions. Ironically, the interventions of US sub-national governments and their weak commitment to transparency have much in common with their frequently maligned Chinese counterparts.

‘The US won a $7.5 Billion award from the World Trade Organization against the European Union, who has for many years treated the USA very badly on Trade due to Tariffs, Trade Barriers, and more. This case going on for years, a nice victory’, tweeted President Trump on 3 October 2019. The United States (US) won not only the highest amount of retaliation ever adjudicated in the history of the WTO but also an ongoing right to retaliate on an annual basis until such time as the EU had complied by either removing the subsidies it granted Airbus or somehow neutralizing their adverse effects on Boeing. In light of the facts of the case, this ruling has two major shortcomings. First, in sharp contrast with the statutory language and practice until now, the Arbitrator effectively introduced a permanent liability rule into the WTO system through the backdoor. Second, given the way the decision and the associated award has been written, it is simply impossible for the EU to comply because (a) the contested subsidies are no longer in existence and (b) no guidance has been provided on how the EU might go about removing their adverse effects on Boeing if it sought to achieve compliance. Thus, in all likelihood, the EU is saddled with a ruling that obligates it to cough up an annual sum of $7.5 billion USD for an indefinite time period.

The ‘new NAFTA’ agreement between Canada, Mexico, and the United States maintained the system for binational panel judicial review of antidumping and countervailing duty determinations of domestic government agencies. In US–Mexico disputes, this hybrid system brings together Spanish and English-speaking lawyers from the civil and the common law to solve legal disputes applying domestic law. These panels raise issues regarding potential bicultural, bilingual, and bijural (mis)understandings in legal reasoning. Do differences in language, legal traditions, and legal cultures limit the effectiveness of inter-systemic dispute resolution? We analyze all of the decisions of NAFTA panels in US–Mexico disputes regarding Mexican antidumping and countervailing duty determinations and the profiles of the corresponding panelists. This case study tests whether one can actually comprehend the ‘other’. To what extent can a common law, English-speaking lawyer understand and apply Mexican law, expressed in Spanish and rooted in a distinct legal culture?

Through legislative changes, tariff wars, and executive actions, the Trump Administration has injected a new urgency into international technology and supply chain management, particularly between the United States and China. Analytically, the situation invites a perspective that links practical/on-the-ground responses by commercial actors in the politics of technological competition between superpowers, i.e. a discussion that bridges the gap between policy and process. This article therefore approaches management of supply chain disruption in terms of a key security issue motivating recent changes to the trade environment: the protection of intellectual property. After reviewing critical policy developments and trade statistics, we draw upon data on IP-intensive industries from global patent offices, trade classifications for products made by these IP-intensive industries, and concordance data on patent classifications to illustrate the centrality of IP to extended supply chains. With these key relationships in mind, we outline specific opportunities that intellectual property licensing provides for managing supply chain linkages between the United States and China in the current geopolitical environment. Viewing intellectual property as both a driver of and a solution to trade difficulties highlights the sorts of cross-jurisdictional nuances that can better inform policy and business decisions alike in the broader international trade regime.

This paper applies machine learning to recreate to a high degree of accuracy the OECD's Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI) to provide quantitative evidence on the restrictiveness of services policies in 2016 for a sample of developing countries, using regulatory data collected by the World Bank and WTO. Resulting estimates are used to extend the OECD STRI approach to 23 additional countries, producing what we term a Services Policy Index (SPI). Converting the SPI to ad valorem equivalent terms shows that services policies are typically much more restrictive than tariffs on imports of goods, in particular in professional services and telecommunications. The SPI has strong explanatory power for bilateral trade in services at the sectoral level, as well as for aggregate goods and services trade.

The March 2019 release of the Appellate Body's compliance report in United States – Measures Affecting Trade in Large Civil Aircraft (Second Complaint) marks yet another chapter in the ongoing Boeing–Airbus dispute. While raising numerous new and old subsidy issues, this paper focuses on one specific aspect, the evaluation of the financial contributions and benefits associated with the Department of Defense (DOD) R&D procurement contracts. The paper describes the differing views taken by the panels compared to the Appellate Body. It highlights two issues that led to an extremely lengthy proceeding: (1) the black or white nature of the decision regarding the characterization of contracts which have features of both purchases of services and joint ventures; and (2) the difficulty in demonstrating a financial contribution flowing from payments for R&D for military systems to Boeing's civil aircraft production. It concludes that this case represents a failure of the WTO dispute settlement system and underscores flaws in the ASCM in that after fifteen years of litigation, no determination was made as to whether or not the DOD R&D contracts examined here constituted impermissible subsidies.

This paper analyzes the Australia – Anti-Dumping Measures on A4 Copy Paper panel report, the second recent WTO dispute to involve a challenge to Indonesia's paper industry. The Indonesian paper industry benefits from reduced-cost inputs because of the Indonesian government's influence and subsidies over the timber and pulp market. The report offers the first interpretation of ‘particular market situation’ under Article 2.2 of the WTO's Anti-Dumping Agreement. At the same time, it raises questions regarding the appropriateness of using anti-dumping measures to address what are fundamentally subsidy issues. While the panel ultimately found that Australia's measure was inconsistent with Article 2.2, the paper shows that the panel's interpretation of ‘particular market situation’ increases the relative attractiveness of using anti-dumping duties instead of countervailing measures. Two key points on the welfare implications of the decision can be made. The first relates to the motivations of the Australian paper industry and the imperfectly competitive market in which Australian Paper operates. The second is the importance of challenging subsidies rather than imposing anti-dumping duties where the subsidies in question have negative environmental effects.

After eight years of effort, the 15 Asian members involved in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) met in a virtual ceremony to sign the final document on Sunday, 15 November 2020. The final deal matches the original objective – to knit the region together and allow firms to build supply chains across the region to deliver goods, services, and investment to Asian markets more seamlessly. Getting this free trade agreement (FTA) to this point involved repeated missed deadlines, the loss of one important negotiating partner, and thousands of miles of travel for a rotating cast of officials, trade ministers, and leaders. RCEP began in late 2012 as an effort to unravel what has often been called the ‘spaghetti or noodle bowl’ of overlapping and inconsistent rules that can impede trade. While most of the countries in the region have extensive experience in trade and are outward oriented, trade in Asia has been bedeviled with challenges. This includes a range of both tariff and non-tariff obstacles that have made it more difficult than might be expected to trade, especially for final products, within the region.