Professional and continuing education

The bed linen dispute provided a welcome and long overdue opportunity to throw some light on, and perhaps reign in some of the more blatant and excessive abuses of the European Commission’s anti‐dumping practices, which over the years, have come under repeated attack by a broad range of legal and economic commentators

In several recent cases brought before the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body, several WTO Members have been taken to task for supposedly failing to comply with their obligations on establishing that a causal link existed between imports and injury caused to a domestic industry while at the same time failing to not attribute injury caused by other factors to injury caused by imports.

From the cases that have been brought before the WTO over the last several years, where a violation to demonstrate a causal link or a non‐attribution violation has been alleged, the panels established to hear these cases and the Appellate Body asked to review the respective panels’ finding have had a difficult time laying out clear and practicable criteria or standards that would provide domestic authorities with the kind of guidance they might need in order to be able to act in compliance with their WTO obligations. The result is a certain amount of confusion and dissatisfaction among all concerned.

The paper will examine the rules and case‐law on antidumping, countervailing duties and safeguards under the WTO Uruguay Round agreements and attempt to examine what is meant by a “causal link” between imports and injury to a domestic industry. This analysis will include an examination of the obligations which ensue from the non‐attribution language contained in the relevant WTO agreements.

This paper offers a detour from the well‐trodden ground of WTO accession procedures and the challenges acceding countries face throughout their accession negotiations, and instead focuses on the WTO accession process from the point of view of those on the other side of the table, namely WTO Members

As the Congress of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) prepares to debate a draft trade policy (the first in the young nation’s history) in the next few months, this is as good a time as any to review the broader economic development context in which this policy was framed and to reviews its adequacy given the rapidly developing landscape of trading arrangements and economic integration emerging throughout the region.

As this paper will show, the 2004 Amended Compact of Free Association with the United States and the unprecedented amount of monetary transfers it involves from the US to the Federated States of Micronesia provides an ongoing source of budgetary support which has created a bloated public sector, stifled the development of a thriving private sector, and provided a long-term safety cushion until at least 2023 and quite possibly beyond. The result has been a culture of dependency, complacency and no real sense of urgency on the part of policy makers to make the painful political-economy choices that will inevitably have to be made if the economy is to move towards anything resembling competitiveness and economic-self sufficiency.

Whereas some of Micronesia’s problems are certainly not of its own making (large distances to world markets, small population, narrow resource base), it is equally true that the vast majority of impediments standing in the way of greater economic efficiency and a business environment in which the private sector can flourish, are solely the cause of poor policies, ill-functioning decision-making structures and the over-fragmentation of sovereignty between the National and State governments. The draft trade policy soon to be debated before Congress cannot be expected to change anything unless it is accompanied by steps to tackle and remove many of these domestic impediments, the political will for which will only be found if the US unambiguously adopts a policy of bilateral engagement with FSM that involves less carrot and more stick.

Slowly but steadily Syria is emerging from several decades of economic seclusion. Syria currently finds itself in a period of cautious albeit unprecedented engagement with the global economy. These efforts are personified in terms of greater engagement within the region, manifested by its participation in the Greater Arab Free Trade Area or GAFTA as well as bilateral agreements with Turkey and Iran, tentative steps to engage with the European Union to a previously unimagined degree, as well as hitherto uneven progress in its long-standing bid to join the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The review conducted in this paper covers five agreements and one draft agreement. The five agreements are the Greater Arab Free Trade Area (GAFTA), the Cooperation Agreement with the European Community (1979), the Association Agreement with the European Union (2004), the Association Agreement with Turkey (2004), and the Preferential Trade Agreement with Iran (2006). The draft agreement reviewed is the one with Belorussia, still pending conclusion, signature and ratification by either party.

The review concludes with a discussion of the strategic implications of trade liberalization are for Syria, looking first at increased engagement bilaterally and regionally followed by a discussion on WTO accession.
The next few years, as Syria moves forward, involve challenges, risks and a certain degree of uncertainty, but they also bring with them the prospect of enormous rewards and benefits for the Syrian economy and its people. To be sure, the alternative of continued marginalization at the periphery of the global trading system and the limited influence this brings with it, is no real alternative at all.

A number of legislative frameworks and policies exercise various constraints on access to the Internet for certain goods, services, and other content. Some of these are recognized by most, if not all market participants as legitimate (data protection laws, measures to combat fraud, as well as the enforcement of intellectual property rights), whereas others are seen as merely disguised protectionism (onerous and/or opaque registration or licensing rules and the heavy-handed application of censorship policies to name just two).

This paper discusses the use that is increasingly being contemplated or made of trade rules, particularly WTO disciplines, to tackle those constraints that are viewed as either disguised protectionism or a breach of WTO commitments. It discusses the scope of these rules, the uses they have been put to in order to pry open services markets up to now, and the likely limits of their application.

It also looks at how those interests most concerned with exporting goods and services via the internet have recognized the limits posed by existing trade rules - at least implicitly - and how they are seeking to address these shortcomings by drafting new rules, either at the WTO or in fora such as bilateral and plurilateral trade agreements.

As the Congress of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) prepares to debate a draft trade policy (the first in the young nation’s history) in the next few months, this is as good a time as any to review the broader economic development context in which this policy was framed and to reviews its adequacy given the rapidly developing landscape of trading arrangements and economic integration emerging throughout the region.As this paper will show, the 2004 Amended Compact of Free Association with the United States and the unprecedented amount of monetary transfers it involves from the US to the Federated States of Micronesia provides an ongoing source of budgetary support which has created a bloated public sector, stifled the development of a thriving private sector, and provided a long-term safety cushion until at least 2023 and quite possibly beyond. The result has been a culture of dependency, complacency and no real sense of urgency on the part of policy makers to make the painful political-economy choices that will inevitably have to be made if the economy is to move towards anything resembling competitiveness and economic-self sufficiency.Whereas some of Micronesia’s problems are certainly not of its own making (large distances to world markets, small population, narrow resource base), it is equally true that the vast majority of impediments standing in the way of greater economic efficiency and a business environment in which the private sector can flourish, are solely the cause of poor policies, ill-functioning decision-making structures and the over-fragmentation of sovereignty between the National and State governments. The draft trade policy soon to be debated before Congress cannot be expected to change anything unless it is accompanied by steps to tackle and remove many of these domestic impediments, the political will for which will only be found if the US unambiguously adopts a policy of bilateral engagement with FSM that involves less carrot and more stick.

In several recent cases brought before the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body, several WTO Members have been taken to task for supposedly failing to comply with their obligations on establishing that a causal link existed between imports and injury caused to a domestic industry while at the same time failing to not attribute injury caused by other factors to injury caused by imports. Under WTO law, an investigating authority conducting, say, an antidumping investigation, must demonstrate that the harm suffered by a domestic industry is caused by the dumped imports. It must specifically not attribute injury caused by other factors to the dumped imports. (GATT VI [1] and VI [6] [a], as well as Articles 3.4, 3.5 of The WTO Antidumping Agreement).Similar obligations exist for domestic authorities conducting countervailing duty investigations with regard to subsidized imports and safeguards investigations with regard to an increase in imports due to unforeseen developments in the wake of trade liberalization.From the cases that have been brought before the WTO over the last several years, where a violation to demonstrate a causal link or a non-attribution violation has been alleged, the panels established to hear these cases and the Appellate Body asked to review the respective panels' finding have had a difficult time laying out clear and practicable criteria or standards that would provide domestic authorities with the kind of guidance they might need in order to be able to act in compliance with their WTO obligations. The result is a certain amount of confusion and dissatisfaction among all concerned.The paper will examine the rules and case-law on antidumping, countervailing duties and safeguards under the WTO Uruguay Round agreements and attempt to examine what is meant by a "causal link" between imports and injury to a domestic industry. This analysis will include an examination of the obligations which ensue from the non-attribution language contained in the relevant WTO agreements.

Slowly but steadily Syria is emerging from several decades of economic seclusion. Syria currently finds itself in a period of cautious albeit unprecedented engagement with the global economy. These efforts are personified in terms of greater engagement within the region, manifested by its participation in the Greater Arab Free Trade Area or GAFTA as well as bilateral agreements with Turkey and Iran, tentative steps to engage with the European Union to a previously unimagined degree, as well as hitherto uneven progress in its long-standing bid to join the World Trade Organization (WTO).The review conducted in this paper covers five agreements and one draft agreement. The five agreements are the Greater Arab Free Trade Area (GAFTA), the Cooperation Agreement with the European Community (1979), the Association Agreement with the European Union (2004), the Association Agreement with Turkey (2004), and the Preferential Trade Agreement with Iran (2006). The draft agreement reviewed is the one with Belorussia, still pending conclusion, signature and ratification by either party.The review concludes with a discussion of the strategic implications of trade liberalization are for Syria, looking first at increased engagement bilaterally and regionally followed by a discussion on WTO accession.The next few years, as Syria moves forward, involve challenges, risks and a certain degree of uncertainty, but they also bring with them the prospect of enormous rewards and benefits for the Syrian economy and its people. To be sure, the alternative of continued marginalization at the periphery of the global trading system and the limited influence this brings with it, is no real alternative at all.

This paper has been prepared for the Islamic Development Bank's Seminar on WTO Accession Issues for selected OIC Member Countries, taking place on 28 -29 March 2006, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It offers a detour from the well-trodden ground of WTO accession procedures and the challenges acceding countries face throughout their accession negotiations, and instead focuses on the WTO accession process from the point of view of those on the other side of the table, namely WTO Members. This paper offers a welcome opportunity to view the WTO accession process from this perspective and attempts to give "the other side of the story".WTO accession as an issue has traditionally and indeed still continues to take a back seat to other fields of activity within the WTO, which tend to attract more attention from Members as well as grabbing more headlines in the media.1 These include WTO dispute settlement, as well as the on-going multilateral trade negotiations within the struggling Doha Round. It is perhaps for this reason that WTO accession as an issue tends to attract only a handful of Members who take a consistent and systemic interest in the topic.This paper is divided into two sections. Section One discusses the different kinds of issues which Members pursue during the negotiations of acceding countries and makes an intellectual distinction between: 1) market access issues; 2) systemic issues, and; 3) non trade-related issues. Section Two looks at some of the issues which come up in particular, under two different sectors, namely trade in agriculture and trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights.What is interesting is that different Members seem to have their own different "pet" issues on which they will invariably take a firm and committed stance. Also interesting is the fact that when two neighboring countries are negotiating with one another, one as a Member and the other as an applicant, the Member can sometimes be relied upon to make a whole series of bilateral trade issues part of the multilateral accession process, thereby capitalizing on its brief negotiating leverage. Finally, there seems to be a consensus that once bilateral deals have been completed with the few major players, accession negotiations tend to become a matter of dotting the "i"s and crossing the "t"s, although, again, this strategy can also come unraveled in the face of a recalcitrant Member who has chosen to take a tough and committed stance on a particular issue.

The bed linen dispute provided a welcome and long overdue opportunity to throw some light on, and perhaps reign in some of the more blatant and excessive abuses of the European Commission's anti-dumping practices, which over the years, have come under repeated attack by a broad range of legal and economic commentators.

This Commentary briefly discusses the WTO dispute between the United States and Turkey over the latter's rice import regime. The ruling could have very important implications for the import regimes of other countries and could represent the opening salvo in a campaign to bring other WTO Members into compliance with their tariffication obligations, which were arguably one of the most significant outcomes of the Uruguay Round agriculture negotiations.

In a number of different fora (particularly the OECD and the ITU) governments have adopted a set of principles which are intended to guide the roll-out of national broadband networks. These principles include, but are not limited to, effective competition, technological neutrality, and the existence of an independent telecommunications regulator, to name just three.The WTO Agreement also contains a set of principles and rules that apply to the supply of services in the telecommunications sector, which also apply to national broadband networks.Since these principles and rules were adopted in the late 1990s and early to mid 2000s, numerous governments have moved ahead with the conceptualization and implementation (roll-out) of their national broadband plans, with varying degrees of adherence to the principles and rules initially agreed upon.This paper discusses the underlying context of national broadband plans as well as the various stakeholders and interests involved in their formulation and adoption. It then discusses some of the most important principles have been agreed shall govern the roll-out of these plans before analyzing how the plans of three governments in particular - Australia, Singapore and the United States - have fared in adhering to these principles. It concludes with a discussion of the possible implications of any deviations from the agreed principles where these may have occurred.

This study takes a hard and somewhat sobering look at the state of Indonesia’s physical (hard) and institutional (soft) infrastructure as the country moves into its second year under the presidential leadership of the recently elected Joko Widodo. The study’s focus is predominantly on how well (or poorly) the country is currently positioned to benefit from the positive and welfare enhancing effects of trade and investment liberalization, something that the country implicitly agreed to embrace when ‐ together with over 120 other economies ‐ it became a founding member of the World Trade Organization in 1995. We first examine some critical infrastructure bottlenecks as they affect roads, electricity generation and ports and conclude that, although the country has made some progress in addressing these, there is still much that needs to be done. The next section of the report focuses on the institutional constraints holding back Indonesia’s integration into the world trading system, particularly the glaring shortcomings that affect the judiciary and law enforcement, as well as the legislative and executive branches of government. Our report then turns to an analysis of the prevailing import and export regimes and finds that these are becoming more rather than less restrictive as various actors at different levels of government seek to establish and assert their permit‐issuing powers in a barely concealed effort to generate rents as well as induce shortages that connected parties can benefit from commercially. Finally our report turns to a brief discussion of the need to implement genuine and effective reform, arguing that this is what the Indonesian people voted for when they elected President Widodo, and discusses how the new president has fared in the face of entrenched elites and well‐organized opposing interests. We conclude that policymakers in Indonesia need to take another long hard look at how they ultimately perceive the national economic interest and how trade and investment liberalization frameworks like the WTO, ASEAN and the still ongoing RCEP negotiations can be harnessed to realize the ambitions of the new president and the electorate who voted for him.