This paper attempts to fill a gap in the trade literature by providing a comprehensive overview of services liberalization commitments in the new generation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) as compared to prevailing GATS commitments and Doha Round offers. The paper reviews the commitments undertaken by 36 WTO Members (counting the EC as one) under mode 1 (cross-border supply) and mode 3 (commercial presence) in 32 PTAs negotiated since 2000. Among other things, the results suggest that, overall, PTA commitments tend to go significantly beyond GATS offers. Countries that have signed PTAs with the United States have made spectacular improvements, but GATS+ commitments are not limited to such agreements. The paper also discusses the potential economic costs arising from these preferential agreements and implications for the role of GATS and for multilateral services negotiations. The paper concludes by exploring possible approaches to overcome the downsides of services PTAs, including suggestions for a more pro-active role for the WTO in the surveillance of these agreements.

One goal that both developed and developing countries share is to increase their export earnings. To do this, countries sometimes resort to various export promotion schemes or request ‘special and differential treatment’ for their exports. However, countries have not fully embraced the notion that their own import tariffs act as a tax on their exports. That is, import protection frustrates their goal of increasing exports. This paper presents quantitative estimates of the extent to which import tariffs discourage exports. The results show that for some countries the bias imparted by tariffs is substantial. Therefore, reducing import tariffs is one way to improve export incentives.

The arcane distinction between ‘rules’, ‘exceptions’, and ‘autonomous rights’ has troubled WTO dispute settlement since its earliest days, primarily with respect to procedural burden-of-proof questions. Yet in its report, the EC–Biotech panel relied on a techno-textual understanding of this distinction to interpret the substantive applicability of Articles 2.2, 5.1, and 5.7 SPS – the WTO’s fundamental rules on the degree of scientific certainty of risk required to allow a state to restrict imports of goods due to human, animal, or plant health or life concerns. This article critiques the panel’s approach on the backdrop of WTO jurisprudence and deontic logic, arguing that the norm-category of ‘autonomous rights’ does not actually exist; that the Article 2.2–5.1/5.7 SPS relationship should be more straightforwardly construed than the panel’s analysis would suggest; and that the disorderly and incoherent outcome of the panel’s analysis serves as a cautionary tale against excessive textualism in WTO dispute settlement.

The recent EC–Biotech case highlights the emerging regulatory divide between WTO Members and reveals a deepening crisis over issues of science and governance in the world trading system. This article focuses on the potential role that social science expertise might play as an analytical tool in understanding trade disputes involving scientific expertise relating to matters of risk assessment and polycentric decision-making. Particular consideration is given to the paradigm of ‘post-normal’ science, which pertains in situations where competent national authorities have to frame and implement policies before all the (scientific) facts are known. As the amicus curiae brief by a group of five social scientists before the EC–Biotech Panel demonstrates, where there is a high degree of scientific uncertainty, as in the case of GM products, post-normal science can offer a valuable means of framing the dispute in a broader societal context than the sound science approach, which is used to assess health, safety, and environmental risks under the SPS Agreement.