Alan Sykes (Stanford University – Law School) has posted Cooperative Unilateralism and the WTO, in Elgar Handbook on Unilateral Measures in Trade, Investment and Economic Law (Luca Rubini ed., forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
In recent years, U.S. trade policy has increasingly disregarded the legal obligations of the United States under the World Trade Organization. Commentators have decried this turn toward “unilateralism” and the damage that it has done to the stability of the world trading system. I do not defend U.S. policy but nevertheless suggest that it results from flaws in the design and operation of the WTO that left the institution unable to respond to shocks that fundamentally changed the political calculus in the United States regarding the utility of its WTO commitments. The sclerotic nature of the WTO ensured that it would eventually start to unravel in the face of changing circumstances. Reforms at the WTO could shore up its support and ongoing relevance, but its future is murky at best.
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