Dumping is one of the most poorly understood and contentious issues in trade policy. The primary reason is that the agreed definitions of dumping are not based on a solid economic foundation. This allows antidumping measures to be used for protectionist ends and to harass trade partners. While...

This paper examines whether government-sponsored export credit arrangements have the same effect on trade as direct export subsidies. The export credit programs for several major agricultural exporters are described. These programs are compared to OECD disciplines for export credit arrangements,...

Article 22 of the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) of the WTO offers, as last resort countermeasures, withdrawal of the concessions the state parties had agreed to in their schedules of commitments. The problem is that such a withdrawal of concessions would have very little impact on the...

Pesticides are an important farm input both in terms of cost and in terms of their impact on crop yields and quality. With freer trade in agricultural output, differences in cost of production, yield and quality can have a large effect on competitiveness. Thus there is an increased demand by...

The technological revolutions that underlie the new information age will tax considerably the abilities of existing international institutions to bring order to international relations. Rapid rates of change may lead to chaos if international institutions cannot evolve to accommodate those...

Professionals in the field of international trade policy tend to receive their knowledge on-the-job, often with a considerable component of mentoring. While this was a reasonable knowledge transfer mechanism in a period when interest in trade policy was confined to narrow constituencies and a...

Recently, the WTO Panel in charge of the softwood lumber case brought by Canada against the United States ruled in favor of Canada. The “benefit conferred” criterion played a critical role in the ruling, which concluded that the United States used a flawed cross-border methodology to...

The world dairy industry is one of the most heavily protected in the agri-food sector. Exports of dairy products are dominated by the EU, the United States, New Zealand, and Australia. The major importers of dairy products are far less concentrated but include the EU, Japan, Mexico, Russia, the...

This article examines CanadaÂ’s softwood lumber dispute with the United States in the context of new juridical models of international dispute settlement and an evolving trade policy environment in North America. Two questions are of central importance to this study. First, what does the rise...

Since the United States and Canada could not resolve their contentious dispute on lumber trade, both countries approached the World Trade Organization to resolve this long-running disagreement. Each country filed three petitions covering (a) countervailing duties (CVD), (b) antidumping, and (c)...