1. Trade - WTO

2. WTO Headquarters: Geneva Member States: 160
Foundation: Marrakesh agreements, 1994
Successor to GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), 1948, adopted when the ITO (International Trade Organization) failed
GATT rounds: Trade negotiations with reciprocal offers of trade access to markets and tariffs reduction
Kennedy Round – 1960s
Tokyo Round – 1970s
Uruguay Round – 1986/1994

3. WTO – Uruguay Round results
Marrakesh Agreements: single undertaking, while GATT was pick and choose
Phase out textile/clothing quotas
Limits on agriculture protection (liberalization of agricultural trade). For the EU, reform of CAP and subsidies to agriculture.
GATS – General Agreement on Trade in Services
TRIPs – Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
WTO establishment – GATT was not an organization
Reform of dispute settlement procedures

4. WTO - Role
Facilitator of negotiations – consensus
Arbiter of disputes

5. GATT/WTO Principles Rules based and non-discriminatory
Transparency – schedule of commitments- trade policy review
Most-favored nation on multilateral basis
National treatment = Imported and locally-produced goods should be treated equally, after the foreign goods have entered the market
Reciprocal concessions
Binding commitments
Exceptions (free trade agreements, customs unions, developing countries)

6. Most-favored-nation treatment
Most-favored-nation treatment = non-discrimination
If a country improves the benefits that it gives to one trading partner, it has to extend the same «best» treatment to all the other WTO members, so that they all are «most-favored»

7. WTO – Dispute settlement
Government vs government (no standing for private companies or entities other than governments)
Complaints: negotiations + panel of experts
Appellate Body: it is a permanent body. It can be considered the supreme court of international trade

8. WTO – Dispute settlement – options
Compliance (no compensation for past adverse effects of unlawful trade policies)
Retaliation (equivalent to violation, if the State doesn’t comply)
Compensation (the State doesn’t change the trade policy but offers other trade advantages as compensation

9. WTO – preferential trade agreements (PTAs)
Exceptions to MFN – art. XXIV GATT
Free trade agreement: eliminates restrictions among members. Maintans customs duties towards non-members. Problem of the rules of origin and transhipment.
Customs union: FTA + common tariff towards non-members.

10. WTO and environment
Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (products regulations)
Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (food safety and animal and plant health)
GATT article XX on general exceptions

11. WTO and environment – article XX GATT
“Subject to the requirement that such measures are not applied in a manner which would constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination between countries where the same conditions prevail, or a disguised restriction on international trade, nothing in this Agreement [the GATT] shall be construed to prevent the adoption or enforcement by any contracting party of measures: ...
(b) necessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health;...
(g) relating to the conservation of exhaustible natural resources if such measures are made effective in conjunction with restrictions on domestic production or consumption. ...”

12. WTO and environment – article XX GATT
GATT Article XX on General Exceptions consists of two cumulative requirements. For a GATT-inconsistent environmental measure to be justified under Article XX, a member must perform a two-tier analysis proving:
first, that its measure falls under at least one of the exceptions (e.g. paragraphs (b) to (g), two of the ten exceptions under Article XX) and, then,
that the measure satisfies the requirements of the introductory paragraph (the “chapeau” of Article XX), i.e. that it is not applied in a manner which would constitute “a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination between countries where the same conditions prevail”, and is not “a disguised restriction on international trade”.

13. WTO and developing countries
Special and differential treatment
Part. IV GATT: non-recirpocal preferential treatment for developing countries
Enabling clause 1979: WTO legal basis for the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP)
Conditions: generalized and non-discriminatory