26-JUN-02
=================================== PPI TRADE FACT OF THE WEEK: Half of all WTO dispute cases involve the United States. ===================================
THE NUMBERS:
WTO cases filed by U.S., Clinton Administration: 64 WTO cases filed against U.S., Clinton Administration: 49
WTO cases filed by U.S., Bush Administration: 2 WTO cases filed against U.S., Bush Administration: 19
WHAT THEY MEAN:
The World Trade Organization has accepted 259 disputes since its creation in 1995. Over half (134) involve the United States. Overall, the balance is about even -- the U.S. has filed 66 cases against other countries, and is defending against complaints in 68. For the past year, though, the U.S. has usually been on the defensive; the Bush Administration's steel tariffs in particular have sparked many new cases.
In the WTO's first five years, from 1995-2000, the U.S. was the most frequent user of dispute settlement. Many cases involved agriculture, including those on European Union beef and banana policies, Japanese restrictions on cherries, Korean shelf-life standards for beef, Mexican anti-dumping penalties on corn syrup, and Canadian export subsidies for dairy products. Other topics ranged from European tariffs on computers to Japanese copyright protection for sound recordings and Indian quota policies in manufacturing. Such cases can win results. For example, the WTO ruled in favor of the U.S.' complaint against Japan on cherries in February of 1999; since then, U.S. exports of cherries to Japan have doubled, from 9 million kilos in 1998 to 18 million kilos last year.
More recently, the balance of litigation has shifted. Since January 2001, the U.S has filed only two cases, and been the subject of 19. The twelve cases filed against the U.S. from January-May of 2002 have already set a new full-year record. Eight of the twelve (filed by Brazil, China, the EU, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland) concern the steel tariffs.
FURTHER READING:
The WTO's list of all cases filed and concluded, together with relevant documents and decisions: http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/dispu_status_e.htm
The U.S. Trade Representative's monitoring and enforcement page, with summaries of WTO cases involving the U.S. (note slightly different count): http://www.ustr.gov/enforcement/dispute.shtml
Testimony by former U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky on WTO dispute resolution: http://www.ustr.gov/speech-test/barshefsky/barshefsky_t40.pdf
PPI on the banana case: http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?contentid=747&knlgAreaID=108&subsecid=128
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