Mutual recognition agreements present unique legal issues in the application of the most-favoured nation obligations flowing from Article I:1 of GATT 1994 and Articles 2.1 and 5.1.1 of the TBT Agreement. Mutual recognition agreements come in two types – those recognizing the equivalence of technical regulations, and those recognizing the equivalence of conformity assessment procedures. Both carry potential trade advantages for state parties, but both also carry the potential to create unintended trade consequences for state parties if combined with a broad application of the most-favoured nation principle. The WTO Appellate Body has touched on a number of the relevant legal issues in a series of reports culminating in the May 2014 EC–Seals decision, but many questions remain. This article seeks to provide states and practitioners with a guide to the issues and the way in which the Appellate Body would most likely address the remaining questions, based on the existing jurisprudence.

Through detailed archival analysis, this paper examines states' voting rights and representation in the International Trade Organization (ITO), which remains an under-analyzed aspect of the post-war multilateral trading system. The paper shows that the US designers of the ITO preferred and pursued formal voting equality because they reasoned it served the institution's intended functions and purposes better than weighted voting. But, as the negotiations undermined US priorities, particularly on balance of payment (BOP) questions, the designers presented a proposal for mirroring the IMF's weighted voting at the ITO. They, however, returned to their original proposal of voting equality when the ultimate draft of the ITO reflected their key preferences without resorting to weighted voting. By closely tracing the drafters' thinking throughout the evolution of the negotiations, the paper contributes to understanding the design of multilateral institutions as well as US behavior in the creation of the post-war multilateral system.

Safety standards can function as non-tariff barriers to trade. Canada is a large exporter of goods and so it has an interest in the regulation of safety standards, both at the multilateral level through its membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and, most especially, at the bilateral and regional level through its Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs). Canada has signed PTAs with provisions that go beyond the obligations of WTO Members under the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures and the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade. This article analyses the nature and enforceability of WTO-plus provisions on sanitary and phytosanitary standards (SPS) as well as product standards (TBT) in Canada's PTAs, from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, Mexico, and the United States to the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union. First, it finds that the inclusion of WTO-plus SPS and TBT provisions in Canada's PTAs is a relatively recent practice that is still in development. Only about half of Canada's PTAs contain WTO-plus SPS and TBT provisions and, those treaties that do, commonly concern institutions for regulatory cooperation and information exchange arrangements, without much commitment to harmonization. Secondly, it finds that nearly half of the SPS and TBT provisions in Canada's PTAs are unenforceable. They either are in a language that is too imprecise for enforcement or do not allow access to a dispute settlement mechanism. Thirdly, it finds that, by global standards, most of Canada's PTAs are modest in their approach to SPS and TBT issues, with NAFTA and CETA as key exceptions. The article concludes that the extent to which regulatory convergence occurs on safety standards for Canada is dependent more on political cooperation between the parties than on the nature and enforceability of SPS and TBT provisions in its PTAs.

Considering the regulatory approval developments for cotton, maize, and soybean within the time period 2000–2013, this paper assesses the extent of asymmetry in the authorizations of new genetically modified organism (GMO) events between importing and exporting countries. The results show an increase in the asynchronous approval across the majority of country pairs. However, focusing only on commercialized events and considering only regulatory approval differences in which the importers are more stringent than the exporters, the asynchronous approval is considerably lower, and the result indicates that the major trade leaders have synchronized their approval status for GMOs over time. Some countries, such as Norway, Switzerland, Thailand, and Turkey seem to face the highest potential for trade disruption, while the opposite holds for Japan and South Korea.

The Seals Regime at issue in EC–Seals pursued conflicting policy objectives of animal welfare, protection of public morals, Inuit, and the marine environment through regulation of product composition and hunting. The panel's TBT findings are problematic. The panel uses the term ‘related’ PPMs in the definition of technical regulations of content and does not distinguish and sequence the legal tests of TBT Articles 2.1 and 2.2 clearly enough. It fails to analyze properly how the necessity analysis should be performed for a multipurpose policy and reduces the ability of WTO members to defend them. The panel also adopts an unduly empiricist definition of public morals and legitimate objectives. This article argues that the content of public morals and legitimate objectives in Article 2.2 should be informed by moral philosophy. Its analysis suggests that collectively binding regulation of ethical standards can generally not be considered to be about public morals.

The national treatment (NT) obligation embodied in Article III:4 of the GATT 1994 has been long marked by legal indeterminacy. Recently, the WTO Appellate Body has shed some fresh light on how the NT obligation should be interpreted in EC–Seal Products. The Appellate Body's report on EC–Seal Products and other recent developments in WTO case law have fundamentally reshaped our collective understanding of the NT obligation. The purpose of this article is to take stock of what we have known about the NT obligation in GATT Article III:4 after EC–Seal Products, as well as identifying some lingering uncertainties. This paper argues that the boundary of the NT obligation in GATT Article III:4 will be largely determined by how the Appellate Body deals with three big issues identified in this article in future disputes.

This compliance proceeding under Article 21.5 of the DSU concerned measures taken by China to implement the recommendations and rulings of the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) in China – GOES. In China – GOES, the DSB found that the imposition by the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China (MOFCOM) of countervailing and anti-dumping duties on grain-oriented flat-rolled electrical steel (GOES) from the United States violated certain provisions of the Anti-Dumping Agreement and the SCM Agreement. In response, MOFCOM issued a redetermination of the matter, pursuant to which China continued to impose anti-dumping and countervailing duties on imports of GOES from the United States. That redetermination was the focus of this compliance proceeding.

Following an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in Argentina in 2001, the United States maintained import prohibitions on certain animals and animal products from Argentina. In this dispute, Argentina challenged two sets of measures: (1) the United States' prohibition on importation of fresh (chilled or frozen) beef from a portion of northern Argentina and on the importation of animals, meat, and other animal products from the Patagonia region as a consequence of the failure to recognize Patagonia as an FMD-free region; and (2) the undue delay of the United States’ application of certain regulatory procedures under which the United States assessed Argentina's requests for re-authorization to import fresh (chilled or frozen) beef from a certain area of northern Argentina and for the recognition of the Patagonia region as FMD-free.

In Poštová banka v. Greece, an ICSID case initiated on the basis of both the Cyprus‒Greece and the Czech Republic‒Greece bilateral investment treaties (the BITs), the tribunal concluded that it lacked jurisdiction over the dispute.