Fossil fuel subsidies undermine efforts to mitigate climate change, and they damage the trading system. Multilateral discussion is hampered by inconsistent definitions and incomplete data, which could increase the risks of WTO disputes. Members do not notify such subsidies as much as they should under the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (ASCM), which limits the usefulness of the SCM Committee. The reports of the Trade Policy Review Mechanism on individual countries and on the trading system draw on a wider range of sources, creating an opportunity for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to provide the missing data from publicly available sources. We suggest a new template that could be used for such third-party notifications. The objective is to shine a light on all fossil fuel subsidies that cause market distortions, especially trade distortions. The result should be better, more comparable data for the Secretariat, governments, and researchers, providing the basis for better-informed discussion of the incidence of fossil fuel subsidies and rationale for their use.

Numerous WTO members pursue regional economic integration with both other members and non-WTO-members. The resulting derogation from the most-favoured-nation principle needs to be justified in accordance with the relevant WTO provisions. Regional integration in the service sector is expressly allowed between WTO and non-WTO members pursuant to GATS Article V. In the absence of clear regulation, it has been questioned whether the same is true for regional trade agreements (RTAs) covering trade in goods. Providing a comprehensive interpretation, this paper argues that neither GATT Article XXIV nor the Enabling Clause require the WTO membership of all the parties to an RTA.

Many national governments around the world applied export restrictions in order to achieve domestic market stabilization during the 2007/8 world food price crisis. However, current literature says little about how these export restrictions interact with existing domestic support measures in jointly determining domestic market outcomes. This paper analyzes this interaction by providing a quantitative assessment on how increased spending on agricultural domestic support in China offset the negative effects on grain production caused by the country's export restrictions and how these two types of measures jointly moderated rises of domestic grain prices. In particular, domestic and trade measures on key agricultural inputs such as fertilizers are shown to contribute significantly to expand grain outputs and reduce domestic market prices. While the short-term goal in stabilizing domestic grain prices was achieved through these measures, large fiscal and efficiency costs were incurred, especially considering how the short-term export restrictions seemingly necessitated the extra spending on input-based domestic subsidies. We also demonstrate that the costs to China and the rest of the world of these complicated policy interventions may be partially avoidable with a simpler and less distorting instrument.

Based on the new conceptualization of the world trading system as the world trade ‘community’, this Article illuminates its internal operation based on legal discourse. The Article first defines WTO norms as lingua franca of the world trade community that enables various forms of discourse among members of the community. It then introduces three main institutionalized forms of the WTO discourse, namely adjudication, peer review, and consultation/negotiation. These three forms of WTO discourse are mainly responsible for the diurnal operation of the world trade community. The Article also explores the intermodal dynamics among these three forms of WTO discourse and demonstrates that such dynamics might generate both positive and negative consequences.

This section is intended for occasional contributions from on-the-ground practitioners. Our hope is that the definition of this category of paper will inspire practitioners to submit notes and articles – typically in the range of 2,000 to 10,000 words – to the World Trade Review. As with all notes and articles submitted to the World Trade Review, manuscripts in this category will be reviewed by independent referees. However, the focus is intended to be practice oriented and at least one of the two referees will be a fellow practitioner.