With its stringent requirements for scientific evidence, the SPS Agreement is commonly considered a greater constraint on WTO Members' regulatory autonomy than the TBT Agreement. It is consequently feared that Members may ‘forum shop’ by reconstructing SPS measures as TBT regulations and hereby circumvent WTO obligations. This article revisits these assumptions in the light of recent TBT jurisprudence and explores the respective challenges of defending policy preferences under the two technical regimes. It argues that in some respects – the characterization of a measure and the chosen level of protection – the SPS Agreement provides a securer basis for Members to defend regulatory choices. While evidential burdens are more explicitly demanding under SPS rules, the challenge of justifying a TBT measure's rationality should not be understated. In light of these reflections, this article concludes that ‘forum shopping’ is an unpromising strategy for protecting controversial SPS measures.

Beyond removing restrictions, trade reform in Latin American in the 1980s and 1990s was in significant part an attempt to change the domestic politics of trade and to reformulate the culture of policy management by introducing procedural characteristics that WTO trade remedy rules advance. This paper examines how trade reform in Peru and Argentina has gone since the reforms of the 1990s. Peru provides a valuable example of sustaining reforms. Leaders have used negotiations and other international instruments to disseminate among Peruvians a positive vision of Peru in the international economy, and to extend the application of WTO-based governance principles. Peru has introduced few new restrictions and all of them have been through WTO-sanctioned policy instruments. Argentina, on the other hand, has introduced multiple restrictions, through procedures that eschew WTO governance principles. Moreover, leaders there have returned trade politics to the dependencia philosophy that sees the international economy as an exploitive environment.The paper brings out the weakness of international obligations to limit Argentina's return to import substitution and the pains at which Peru has gone to maintain the management of its economy within the same rules that Argentina has so easily violated. To have commercial value, the GATT/WTO principle that members apply only approved methods of trade control must have operational expression in national institutions.

Measured by the standards of the relevant GATS provisions, in Article V, a very significant share of current regional trade agreements (RTAs) in services is deficient. This includes agreements involving the 50 odd WTO Members that are currently negotiating a Trade in Services Agreement (TISA). While these agreements might have improved significantly on many commitments contained in current GATS schedules, mostly submitted two decades ago, they also introduced new restrictions for which no GATS equivalents exist. Moreover, in a number of cases the parties fiddled with the definitional framework provisions and generally binding obligations and disciplines of the GATS. Should these attempts continue, TISA could not live up to its proclaimed objective of promoting future multilateral liberalization.

Nevertheless, a closer look at some RTAs previously concluded by TISA parties also suggests that, with political will, there is a possibility to avoid aberrations: a clause providing that in the event of inconsistencies with WTO/GATS provisions, the latter shall prevail. The incorporation of such a clause might be viewed as a litmus test on participants' continued commitment to multilateralism.

The new WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) is a significant step forward for the international trading regime, representing new hope for the relevance of the WTO.

The TFA is the first multilateral agreement since the creation of the WTO in 1995 and includes novel measures to help developing countries build capacity, while also taking into consideration regulatory concerns of WTO members through the application of the general GATT exceptions to the new agreement. While the TFA may appear narrow in scope, with regards to goods it is arguably the broadest WTO Agreement besides the GATT, since all goods that cross national borders find themselves subject to trade facilitation measures. If the TFA is properly interpreted, the combination of capacity-building measures, a focus on technological improvements and the judicious invocation of Article XX could result in a win-win situation wherein routine positive trade is streamlined, reducing time required to cross borders, while negative trade is more easily controlled and regulated at the border.

Despite regulatory questions concerning implementation, it is likely that the TFA will reduce the cost of trading across borders, while improving trade for developing countries and allowing WTO members to better control trade flows, through a combination of procedural streamlining and regulatory discretion.

Herein, we examine how the United States and the European Union use trade agreements to advance the free flow of information and to promote digital rights online. In the 1980s and 1990s, after US policymakers tried to include language governing the free flow of information in trade agreements, other nations feared a threat to their sovereignty and their ability to restrict cross-border data flows in the interest of privacy or national security.

In the twenty-first century, again many states have not responded positively to US and EU efforts to facilitate the free flow of information. They worry that the US dominates both the Internet economy and Internet governance in ways that benefit its interests. After the Snowden allegations, many states adopted strategies that restricted rather than enhanced the free flow of information. Without deliberate intent, efforts to set information free through trade liberalization may be making the Internet less free.

Finally, the two trade giants are not fully in agreement on Internet freedom, but neither has linked policies to promote the free flow of information with policies to advance digital rights. Moreover, they do not agree as to when restrictions on information are necessary and when they are protectionist.

The development and use of clean technologies constitute a useful means of mitigating global warming. Although certain developing countries have become major emitters of greenhouse gases, they are not in a position to access the clean technologies that are prevalent in developed nations. In advocating technology transfers under the United Nations' climate change regime, developing countries argue that the intellectual property regime covering climate-related technologies must be ameliorated. In their proposals, they argue that compulsory licensing for clean technologies can be instrumental in furthering global access.

This paper examines the legal issues associated with granting compulsory licenses for clean technologies. I analyze the legal challenges to authorizing such licenses, particularly in light of WTO/TRIPS and of national practices.

An analysis of the previous practices surrounding the application of compulsory licensing reveals the severe hurdles facing competent national authorities and indicates the costs and burdens of such an action, which not every WTO member can afford. Jumping to the conclusion that the compulsory licensing of clean technologies is simply an illusory option may be premature; nevertheless, the legal barriers and burdens may dissuade developing nations from using such licenses injudiciously.

These compliance proceedings under Article 21.5 of the DSU concerned measures adopted by the United States to comply with the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) recommendations and rulings in US – COOL. In US – COOL, the DSB found that a certain US country-of-origin labelling (COOL) measure regarding muscle cuts of meat (the Original COOL Measure), and the administration of that measure, were inconsistent with certain aspects of the TBT Agreement and the GATT 1994. The United States' measure taken to comply with the recommendations and rulings of the DSB consisted of an amendment to the Original COOL Measure (the 2013 Final Rule). In these compliance proceedings, the Panel and Appellate Body referred to the 2013 Final Rule, together with the Original COOL Measure, as the Amended COOL Measure. The Amended COOL Measure was the focus of these compliance proceedings.

This dispute concerned India's import prohibition affecting certain agricultural products from countries reporting Notifiable Avian Influenza to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). India maintains this import prohibition through certain legal instruments concerning Avian Influenza (AI) – the AI Measures.

This dispute concerned the definitive safeguard measure imposed by Ukraine on imports of certain passenger cars to Ukraine and the investigation that led to the imposition of this measure.

This dispute concerned the price range system (PRS) maintained by Peru that may result in the imposition of additional duties or rebates on certain types of imported rice, sugar, maize, and milk.

In Bilcon et al. v. Canada, a NAFTA Chapter 11 dispute, the tribunal's majority held Canada liable for breaches of NAFTA Articles 1102 (National Treatment) and 1105 (Minimum Standard of Treatment). Pr. D. McRae – Canada's appointed arbitrator – dissented from both findings.