This chapter describes the WTO dispute settlement system, focusing on its structure, procedures, and recent challenges. The WTO system, established in 1995, was a significant innovation in international trade law, featuring mandatory jurisdiction and a detailed set of rules in the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU). It aimed to ensure adherence to WTO commitments and provide predictability to the trading system.However, recent US concerns over the Appellate Body’s functioning led to blocked appointments, rendering the Appellate Body defunct and the system non-binding. This crisis has led to the exploration of alternative mechanisms like the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA) and increased reliance on regional trade agreement dispute settlement mechanisms.

This chapter explores the complexities of discrimination in international trade law, a core principle that mandates equal treatment of foreign and domestic goods, services, and intellectual property. Despite its significance, the definition of discrimination remains contested, with debates focusing on intent versus impact and the comparability of products. The chapter analyses these issues, examining key legal texts like the GATT, GATS, and TRIPS agreements, and the evolving jurisprudence of GATT panels and the WTO Appellate Body. It highlights the shifts in interpreting ‘discrimination’, including the move from considering both ‘aim and effect’ to focusing primarily on the effect of trade measures. The chapter concludes by discussing the challenges in reaching a clear, agreed-upon standard for discrimination and the implications for international trade.

This chapter examines the legal framework of contingent protection measures in international trade, focusing on anti-dumping duties, countervailing duties, and safeguards. It outlines the relevant WTO rules, including the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and explores the justifications for these measures. These trade remedies, while protectionist, address concerns of unfair trade practices and market disruption. The chapter also addresses the challenges posed by non-market economies and the evolving role of subsidies. Finally, it discusses the economic, political, and geopolitical rationales for contingent protection, highlighting the tension between fairness and efficiency in international trade.

This chapter examines the role of tariffs and quotas in international trade law, focusing on their regulation within the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the World Trade Organization. While often associated with free trade, these legal frameworks primarily discipline rather than prohibit protectionism, favouring tariffs as the more acceptable instrument. The chapter traces the evolution of tariffs as the preferred trade barrier, contrasting them with the general prohibition on quotas. It also discusses the complexities of tariff application, including classification, valuation, and origin determination. Finally, it considers the future of tariffs and quotas, and the challenges of achieving full trade liberalisation without regulatory harmonisation to prevent regulatory arbitrage.

This chapter historicises the current moment of transformation in international trade governance by examining the evolving boundaries of trade expertise and the shifting techniques of trade governance. It adopts a periodisation of post-Second World War international economic governance, starting with the ‘embedded liberal’ period, continuing with the ‘neoliberal period’, and concluding with the contemporary period of liberalism ‘in motion’ or kineo-liberalism. The chapter demonstrates how the boundaries of the expert field and the available governance techniques are deeply connected to the broader politics of trade governance, reflecting and sustaining larger shifts in convictions concerning the purposes and rationales of international trade governance. The current moment is characterised by instability, uncertainty, and contestation, leading to a denaturalisation of the boundaries of trade governance and a reinterpretation of its fundamental aspects.

This chapter examines the complex relationship between international trade law and public health. While trade liberalisation can lower the cost of medical supplies and raise global standards of living, trade rules also constrain national public health measures and can facilitate trade in harmful products. The chapter analyses how the World Trade Organization (WTO) has addressed health-related trade restrictions, including disputes over tobacco, alcohol, and asbestos. It also explores the tension between intellectual property rights and access to essential medicines, as well as the impact of trade on healthcare supply chains, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. The chapter concludes by critiquing the WTO’s ‘exceptionalism’ framework for evaluating public health measures and arguing for a more integrated approach that prioritises both health and economic resilience.

Abstract: This chapter examines the system of remedies applied in WTO dispute settlement, sometimes called ‘prospective’ or ‘forward-looking’. This system integrates remedy repetition and remedy escalation, with remedies being issued sequentially: initial rulings (Mere Adjudication and Declarations of Breach) are followed by the possibility of compliance adjudication, and, where this is insufficient, the prospect of escalation through authorised trade retaliation (Permissible Responses). While authorised retaliation is often seen as the key WTO remedy, the practice shows that it is rarely implemented. Instead, the system’s strength lies in mobilising the deterrent effect of remedy escalation together with the reputational costs of declared non-compliance. The chapter considers the historical evolution of remedies applied in international trade law, from the GATT 1947 to the current Dispute Settlement Understanding, analysing their central components and practical applications. The design of the WTO’s system of remedies, which seeks to mobilise the various layers of pro-compliance forces of international law, provides an analytical framework for the subsequent chapters assessing the remedial practice of international courts in the face of non-compliance.

This chapter aims at exploring how normative beliefs and interests inform inter-state relations and, thereby, the law of regional economic community. In so doing, this chapter will provide the basis for the key claim of this book – that is, that the idea of prosperity underpinning RTAs in the Global South as they currently exist is more of a mirage than reality. Trade has undoubtedly been crucial to economic prosperity throughout history. However, simply creating ambitious trade rules with neighbouring states is not enough; without robust institutions to implement these rules, economic benefits remain largely theoretical and mythical. This is so because codifying ambitious rules without strong institutions that will engender implementation of those rules is a proposition without concreteness that is grounded on utopian hopes. This chapter zeroes in on the idea that by focusing only on trade rule codifications, the architects of RTAs in the Global South may be constraining their approach on how they envisage the notion of prosperity. Thus, accordingly, both normative beliefs and interests are indispensable for any RTA that can generate meaningful prosperity.

Chapter 9 addresses a selection of contract law issues including licensing and collaboration agreements from a practical point of view. It also engages with competition law, international trade law, and environmental law aspects of beer law. The chapter includes a section devoted to the legal issues that are associated with cross-border internet sales of beer.

International trade law is a subset of public international law and consists of the rules governing trade between nations. Historically this area of law was primarily concerned with trade in goods, but now includes trade in services (effectively the cross-border supply and consumption of services) and trade in intellectual property. International trade law has relevance to other fields of international economic law, including investment law. However, the focus of this chapter is on trade law as conducted under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO), an organisation that commenced on 1 January 1995. This chapter briefly introduces these concepts, and then explains the current structure of the WTO. It then covers the core disciplines of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 and the main exceptions to these disciplines, before turning to the safeguards, dumping and subsidies regimes. The chapter then introduces the two agreements that cover regulatory standards at the WTO, and finally provides an overview of the General Agreement on Trade in Services.

As the first chapter in Part One (which describes the book’s two main characters – sustainable development and the World Bank exemplifying the IFIs – and narrates how their paths meet), chapter 1 maps the international community’s varied and evolving understandings of sustainable development, drawing particular attention to how these understandings overlap with and echo themes from early attempts to reform international economic law, ie the legal rules governing the global economic order, and the contemporary efforts to codify the human right to development.

This chapter critically examines the People’s Republic of China’s engagement with international trade law from the perspectives of rule-taking and rule-making, including China’s pre-reform planned economy-based trade regime, its voluntary internalization of global trade rules in the decade before its World Trade Organization (WTO) accession, trade reform to comply with WTO rules, the China–US trade war (in violation of international trade law) and the Chinese position on WTO reform. It argues that, in its reform and opening-up period (1978–present), China has largely been a rule-taker and a responsible – albeit possibly reluctant at times – status quo power in the United States-led, West-dominated international economic system. On the other hand, it has also taken an instrumentalist approach to international trade law with a foreign trade policy pragmatically oriented towards achieving a balance between trade liberalization and protectionism based on calculated uses of industrial policy tools and non-tariff barriers to support selected domestic industries.

International economic law is an umbrella term with no fixed meaning. At its broadest, it covers all aspects of economic relations between states, including regulation of the conduct of individuals, corporations and international organisations. A narrower meaning is ‘the segment of public international law directly governing – rather than merely affecting – economic relations between States or international organizations’. The field also embraces governance arrangements, such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization, as well as the many UN and regional bodies that advance economic development. As space does not permit a discussion of all these aspects, this chapter focuses on two important areas: international trade law and international investment law. International trade law is the body of law, mainly treaty based, that governs the terms on which states permit the trade in goods and services across their borders.

This chapter looks at the current attacks on international economic law with respect to trade and investment. It considers the trajectory of these attacks and the consequences of a complete dismantling of this body of international law.