The World Trade Organization
at Twenty
Roger B. Porter
IBM Professor of Business and Government
Harvard University
It is almost always easier to see more clearly in retrospect. Some developments, viewed from the vantage point of history, look more inevitable than
they seemed when they began.1 This brief essay examines the formation of the
World Trade Organization (WTO) twenty years after its creation, explores the
contributions it has made in its first two decades, and assesses how well it has
met the expectations of those who established it.
Since the end of the Second World War, trade has served as one of the
engines pulling the global economy along the path of prosperity. Trade not only
allows nations to benefit by focusing on producing goods and services in which
they have a comparative advantage, but it also stimulates innovation and facilitates the efficiencies of the global supply chains associated with multinational
corporations, helping lift millions in developing countries out of poverty.2
The devastating results of the policies that contributed to the onset of the
Great Depression, including protectionist trade measures, have influenced economic thinking and policy significantly in recent decades. Following passage in
the United States of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, other nations quickly
followed suit in sharply raising their own tariff levels, leading to a dramatic
decline in world trade.
This spread of tariff policies can be compared to a common occurrence
at basketball games: when spectators in the front row stand up, those seated
behind will soon follow. Some spectators see an advantage in being the first to
stand up and the last to sit down. Indeed, the prompt to stand is more readily
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Roger B. Porter is the IBM Professor of Business and Government at Harvard University. He served for
more than 11 years in senior economic policy positions in the Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George
H.W. Bush administrations.
Copyright © 2015 by the Brown Journal of World Affairs
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followed than the plea to sit down. The challenge is getting everyone to sit down
together. This challenge was the impetus for passage of the Reciprocal Trade
Agreements Act of 1934, which made limited progress on the problem before
war engulfed the world.
As the Second World War drew to a close, officials from a host of countries
determined to establish a series of international institutions to create and maintain the conditions for peace and prosperity. One product of these discussions was
the United Nations. Three economic-related institutions were also envisioned:
the World Bank for financial and structural issues; the International Monetary
Fund for fiscal and monetary issues; and the International Trade Organization
(ITO) for governing trade and a host of related policy areas including employment, competition policy, investment, and commodity agreements. But the
ITO’s reach went too far for a majority in the U.S. Congress, which refused to
approve U.S. participation in the organization.
THE CREATION OF THE WTO
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In place of the ITO, a more limited, trade-focused entity, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), was established as a contract, rather than
as an organization. With contracting parties instead of members, it stood as an
orphan of the United Nations system. The commitments of the contracting
parties were applied provisionally. As a provisional body, it did not have the
same stature as its counterpart international entities nor the ability to enforce
agreements. Initially, the title of the head of the GATT secretariat was “Executive Secretary.” It was not until March 1965 that its head was accorded the title
“Director-General.”3
The GATT functioned remarkably well given its provisional status, conducting seven rounds of multilateral negotiations primarily devoted to reducing
tariffs and some nontariff border barriers from the late 1940s through the mid1980s. The GATT’s initial 23 contracting parties grew to more than 100 when
the Tokyo Round was brought to a close. The United States did not recognize
the GATT formally in legislation until the Trade Agreements Act of 1979, which
implemented the Tokyo Round.4
The creation of the World Trade Organization came in part from a quest
for completeness. The GATT operated, amazingly successfully, as an interim
provisional body without the foundation of the other post–World War II institutions. There is much inertia in the world of public policy, particularly with
organizations that are functioning competently. Although the GATT benefitted from that inertia, many trade officials, ministers, and civil servants had an
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understandable desire to enhance the GATT’s stature.
More importantly, the world of trade policy was shifting beyond reducing border barriers. The eighth multilateral round, which began in Uruguay in
September 1986 and lasted for more than seven years, embraced an expanding
agenda. The traditional emphasis on tariff reductions for trade in goods was
supplemented to include agriculture, services, dispute settlement, intellectual
property rights, subsidies and other technical barriers to trade, and full access
for textiles and clothing from developing countries.5
The Uruguay Round occurred during a time when a host of reinforcing
developments—the rise of Japan as a major economic power; the dissolution
of the Soviet Union that accompanied the end of the Cold War; the The GATT functioned remarkably
reforms that began to transform well given its provisional status.
China’s economy; and the revolution
in information technology, transportation, and communications—contributed
to a more expansive and vibrant global trading system. Most of the first seven
GATT negotiating rounds involved reducing border barriers, primarily tariffs
and quotas. The number of countries involved was relatively modest, and the
Quad governments—Canada, the EU, Japan, and the United States—dominated
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GATT’s deliberations. The GATT functioned well, but officials and scholars
saw the need to transition to a more robust organization, in particular one with
a more judicialized dispute settlement system.
In the United States, trade policy involves a complicated relationship
between the executive and legislative branches. During the post–World War II
period in the United States, the executive branch has generally been more supportive of reducing barriers to trade than Congress has been. At the same time,
Republican administrations and members of Congress have supported marketoriented trade agreements more than many Democratic members of Congress.6
The particular interests of organized labor have often been outweighed, for many
Democrat legislators, by the general interest in lower prices, wider selection,
and easier access to high-quality goods and services.7 The launch of the Uruguay
Round in 1986 came during the year in Ronald Reagan’s second term when the
Democratic Party regained control of the Senate to go along with its majority in the House. Effective participation by the United States in the Uruguay
Round negotiations required that the administration secure “fast-track,” now
called Trade Promotion Authority. The result of the long, intense negotiations
that granted this authority was the 468-page Omnibus Trade Act of 1988. It
included a series of provisions that forced U.S. trade officials to aggressively
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target trade practices by other nations that many in Congress considered unfair.
The focal point of the legislation was the Super 301 section. This expansion of
the provision in the Trade Act of 1974 required the U.S. Trade Representative
to publicly identify nations deemed to employ unfair trade practices and to use
a series of unilateral actions to address such practices.
Another development in U.S. trade policy in 1988 was the successful negotiation of the Canada–U.S. Free Trade Agreement, the second bilateral free trade
treaty entered into by the United States.8 Among other things, that agreement
included an innovative dispute settlement mechanism to resolve the inevitable
disagreements that arise from time to time between trading partners.
U.S. President George H.W. Bush came into office in early 1989 committed
to a growth-oriented trade policy that had several challenging objectives: implementing the Canada–U.S. Free Trade Agreement, advancing the multilateral
Uruguay Round negotiations, and walking the tightrope of implementing the
1988 act to the satisfaction of Congress without exacerbating trade relations with
Japan and other countries that many in Congress wanted punished as unfair
traders.
The new U.S. Trade Representative, Carla Hills, assembled an experienced
team of deputies, including Ambassador to the GATT, Rufus Yerxa, who had
served as assistant chief counsel of the House Ways and Means Committee and as
staff director of its subcommittee on trade, and Jules Katz, an experienced State
Department trade negotiator.9 The collection of U.S. trade officials acknowledged the shared nature of trade policy between the executive and legislative
branches.
In many respects, the Uruguay Round was the logical culmination of trends
and constituted an ambitious effort to achieve several objectives: to continue
to reduce border barriers to trade in goods, as well as to expand the reach of
multilateral rounds into services, government procurement, intellectual property, and to deal with the behavior of state-owned enterprises. It also sought to
address an acknowledged weakness of the GATT—the lack of an effective and
credible dispute settlement mechanism.
The creation of the WTO advanced three objectives that the United States
and its closest allies had explicitly and implicitly championed for many decades:
the idea of free enterprise including free trade as the best way to organize economic activity; the notion of the rule of law, a standard that all will embrace and
to which all will be held accountable; and the idea of an equality of opportunity
rather than of results.
Interestingly, the relationship between the two nations with the largest
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single trading relationship in the world, the United States and Canada, proved
crucial in a number of respects. In his comprehensive book on the history of the
WTO, Craig VanGrasstek appropriately identifies John Jackson as the intellectual
father of the organization. Jackson, a highly regarded former U.S. trade policy
official and distinguished law professor, first privately, then publicly, advanced
a series of persuasive arguments that the time had come for a strengthened set
of institutional trade policy arrangements. One of his University of Michigan
students, Debra Steger, a lawyer on assignment to the Canadian government,
worked closely with Jackson to craft a document that provided the initial impetus.10
The creation of the World Trade Organization was a combination of
ambition, opportunity, and need. Trade officials in the Quad countries were
understandably ambitious for an organization that could take its rightful place
among the array of established international economic institutions. The closing
months of the eight-year negotiation provided an opportunity to put in place
a fitting structure to help implement the ambitious agreements that had been
painstakingly forged. Perhaps most importantly, the genuine need for a successful
and legitimate dispute settlement process generated support among the major
participating countries to take the next logical step.
Moreover, many of the new regional agreements (including the North
American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA) had included innovative dispute
settlement processes, as well as other provisions dealing with services and intellectual property. This movement into the non-border barrier terrain was another
reason why the United States and Europe felt the need to create a more robust
institutional structure.
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IMPLEMENTATION
It is common to focus more attention on the development of policy than on
its implementation. It is instructive, however, to consider how the WTO has
established itself as a new institution over the past 20 years.
Successful organizations develop a reputation, among other things, for
competence, fairness, efficiency, and reliability—qualities that characterize the
roughly 640 officials of the World Trade Organization Secretariat. The secretariat
performs the unglamorous but essential tasks of gathering and maintaining key
information, including a new online database; ensuring agreements and rules
are properly implemented through the work of the Trade Policy Review Body;
organizing the roughly biannual Ministerial Conferences; preparing reports on
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global trade developments; and, not least, supporting the work of the dispute
settlement panels and the appellate body.11
The WTO has consistenly reached beyond the Quad countries for leadership. In its first two decades, the WTO has been led by six Director-Generals
who have hailed from Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Thailand, France, and Brazil.12
This pattern is unmatched by any
The W TO has reached beyond other major international governthe Quad countries [Canada, the mental organization. At the same
time, the WTO staff is overall
European Union, Japan, and the increasingly international.13 The
United States] for leadership. key division directors come from
South Africa, Egypt, Austria,
Canada, and the United States. One effect of the growth of staff from outside
the Quad members is the significant role now played by the quarter of the staff
who come from developing countries. Not only does this changed composition
provide a valuable diversity of backgrounds and perspectives, it also more fully
reflects the expanded membership of the WTO.
The most significant implementation challenge the WTO has faced is
putting in place the new dispute settlement system. During its first 20 years,
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the WTO has received 491 cases, averaging 24 to 25 cases per year (compared
to the annual GATT average of five cases). The United States has been the
most active participant by far, as the complainant in 108 cases (22 percent),
the respondent in 124 cases (25.2 percent), and a third party in 120 more cases
(24.4 percent). In all, the United States has been involved in 352 of the 491
cases, or 71.7 percent.
The main complainants against the United States have been:
European Union (formerly European Commission): 32 cases
Canada: 15 cases
South Korea/Brazil: 10 cases each
China/Mexico: 9 cases each
Japan/India: 8 cases each
Thailand/Argentina: 5 cases each
Indonesia: 3 cases
Australia/Chile/New Zealand/Pakistan/Vietnam: 2 cases each
The main respondents to U.S. claims have been:
European Union (formerly European Commission): 19 cases
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China: 15 cases
India/Mexico/South Korea/Japan: 6 cases each
Argentina/Canada: 5 cases each
Australia/Brazil/France/Indonesia/Philippines: 4 cases each
U.K./Ireland/Belgium: 3 cases each
Germany/Greece/Spain/Turkey: 2 cases each.14
What most distinguishes the WTO dispute settlement process from that
used by the GATT is that countries do not have the opportunity to block a panel
finding. This shift has not generated a large or growing number of complaints.
The WTO member countries have avoided an avalanche of litigation that could
overwhelm the system. At the same time, the judicial process has been stretched,
requiring an enhancement of the resources devoted to it.
In just under half of the cases filed over the past 20 years, the parties are
either still in consultations or the case was settled with a mutually agreed solution without the issuance of a panel or appellate report. This pattern, akin to an
out-of-court settlement, is not unusual in judicial systems where fully litigating
a matter is expensive, time consuming, and sometimes risky. Often, it is merely
the instigation of consultations that prompts countries to reach an agreement or
understanding. Working out a settlement is more efficient than fully litigating a
matter. Moreover, reaching an understanding acceptable to both parties suggests
that the outcome has, at a minimum, the aura of fairness.
In the remaining cases, the decisions of the WTO panels established to
consider a complaint have been, with few exceptions, either implemented by
the respondents, adopted with no further action required, or adopted with
recommendations to bring the measure into conformity. In short, the dispute
settlement system has worked remarkably smoothly. Judicial processes, including
those of the WTO, often proceed slowly and deliberately, but its determinations
have been accepted and implemented.
The WTO dispute settlement system has had a number of positive effects.
It has buttressed the global trading system by establishing a place where countries
can bring their trade disputes with the confidence that they will be adjudicated
fairly. The existence of a functioning, deliberative dispute settlement system that
is viewed as legitimate has many ancillary effects as well. It causes countries to
take their commitments more seriously than they would in its absence and it
has helped to facilitate a pattern of voluntary compliance with trade agreements.
Those who engage in the arcane world of cases brought before WTO
panels and the appellate body describe a number of characteristics. The strong
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consensus is that the dispute settlement system as a whole works remarkably
well. Unsurprisingly, the system is less adept at handling complex trade issues
and can get lost in the details. Like much litigation, initiating and arguing a
case is expensive and the outcome is often uncertain. Those features contribute
to caution in taking complaints to the WTO and a propensity to settle cases
when the parties can reach an acceptable outcome.
For example, the United States brought a discrimination case against China
in 2004 on integrated circuits. At the time, China had imposed a 17 percent
Value Added Tax on semiconductors, 14 percent of which would be rebated if
it were a domestic semiconducThe existence of the settlement tor. The consultations led China
a
system invariably contributes to to withdraw the measure before
15
WTO panel was formed. This
countries not violating their tariff case also illustrates the challenge
obligations or imposing quotas. of getting reliable data on all the
aspects of the dispute settlement
system. The difficulty comes from a lack of good data on the reasons why a
country chooses to cease pursuing a case. Unless a compliance panel is formed,
the reasons and considerations for why a case is stopped are known in detail
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only by those policy officials and attorneys involved.
The existence of the dispute settlement system invariably contributes to
countries not violating their tariff obligations or imposing quotas. The more
difficult areas to police involve domestic subsidies or standards. Likewise, the
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is
an international agreement administered by the WTO that sets down minimum
standards for many forms of intellectual property (IP) regulation as applied to
the nationals of other WTO members. TRIPS does not yet have a developed
judicial system nor a catalog of established precedents, and the dispute settlement
process can be difficult to administer where lines are not yet drawn.
One ancillary result of the establishment of the WTO dispute settlement
system is that it has effectively ended the use by the United States of Section
301, a provision first adopted in the Trade Act of 1974.16 Under the GATT, U.S.
domestic interests could legitimately argue that there was no effective judicial
avenue to seek redress for grievances. An effective and credible WTO dispute
settlement system has vanquished that claim.
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EXPANSION AND INTEGRATION
The global trading system is different than it was 20 years ago. The WTO has
not only successfully established a dispute settlement system that is viewed as
legitimate and effective, but it has also carefully expanded its membership to
include virtually all countries with substantial trade. Two of the largest additions,
China on 11 December 2001 (after 16 years of talks) and Russia on 22 August
2012 (after 18 years of talks) have now accepted a set of internationally agreed
rules to govern their global trade.
Trade has proven crucial to the economic success of China, success that
has helped to lift hundreds of millions of its citizens out of poverty and has
facilitated China’s embrace of many elements of the economic arrangements
that exist in advanced industrial economies. Reformers in China used the desire
to reap the benefits of WTO membership as a tool to help put market-oriented
reforms in place.
The existence of the WTO and the commitments countries made in
joining it have also helped governments to resist the protectionist impulses
that accompany a downturn in economic activity. The recession that engulfed the global economy in 2008 did not lead to a repeat of the policies
adopted in the 1930s, when the sharp increase in trade barriers dramatically
reduced global trade and contributed to prolonging the Great Depression.
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PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES FOR THE WTO
Perhaps the greatest disappointment for the WTO in its first two decades has
been its ineffectiveness as a negotiating system. Twenty years have passed without the conclusion of a successful multilateral round, and the prospect for one
in the immediate future is dim. A major impediment for the WTO is the need
to operate by consensus. With 160 members, the need for consensus leaves
the many at the mercy of the few and gives disproportionate influence to the
recalcitrant and the reluctant. The earlier GATT rounds were dominated by the
Quad countries, which shared a commitment to trade liberalization and could
reach agreements by essentially giving developing countries a free ride.
Close observers acknowledge that today there are a group of countries that
have little invested in the success of the WTO or in seeing its members reach
agreements. With the accession of China and Russia, the BRIC economies
(Brazil, Russia, India, and China) are now in a position both to play a large
role in WTO negotiations and to resist further liberalization efforts. Developing
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countries, often skillfully led by Brazil, have played a powerful role in forestalling
agreements, as in Cancun in 2003. Some emerging economies do not view the
increased disciplines advanced in WTO agreements as serving their economic
interests.
In short, today’s environment is not favorable to a successful multilateral
agreement. While the United States and the European Union remain committed,
they each face a populist backlash against further trade liberalization. In many
respects, China is in a regression toward state capitalism and, at the same time,
is reluctant to put pressure on other developing countries for more liberalization.
Enthusiam for greater trade liberalization is limited in much of the developing
world, while some developing countries are also liberalizing unilateraly and
negotiating free trade agreements outside of the WTO.
The World Trade Organization does not exist in a vacuum. Progress with
respect to completing the Doha Round, or any major multilateral round, requires
the support or acquiescence of important constituencies—business, labor, and
governmental bureaucracies. The lens through which such constituencies will
view any major change depends on their own particular interests as well as on
their sense of national interest. In the United States, the active participation of
major business leaders in earlier multilateral rounds is strikingly different from
the more muted support they’ve given the Doha Round.
The logic of trade liberalization and the benefits it confers continue to attract
strong support not only from economists but also from far-sighted policymakers
and business leaders. The bicycle theory of trade policy—that “the failure to move
steadily forward toward liberalization condemns the trading system to tip over
or fall backward in the face of protectionist pressure”—is also widely accepted.17
As the membership of the World Trade Organization has grown and the
number of parties involved in negotiations has expanded, completing the Doha
Round has become increasingly difficult. In the wake of this prolonged failure, the
number of regional trade agreements has proliferated. In 2012 and 2013, the WTO
received 37 and 35 new notifications of regional trade agreements (RTAs), respectively. All WTO members except Mongolia are members of one or more of the
581 RTAs, with some members belonging to as many as 30 regional agreements.18
A consequence of this explosion of regional trade agreements is that international trade has become unnecessarily complicated. From the standpoint of
an individual company, becoming familiar with and complying with a host
of different rules, standards, and procedures is time consuming and requires a
major commitment of resources. Small- and medium-sized companies are at
a disadvantage in navigating through the thicket of requirements reflected in
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the multitude of agreements that have been concluded. Larger companies are
better able to absorb these costs, although for them it constitutes an added cost
of business. Not only is compliance costly, the negotiation of regional trade arrangements gives fresh opportunities and leverage to those who seek particular
benefits and specific protections.
The United States, long a champion of free trade, has shifted its attention
to concluding two large regional trade agreements—the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with 11 other countries and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership (TTIP) with the
European Union. 19 The TPP A power ful reason for trade, in
negotiations include 12 nations,
addition to its economic benefits,
the economies of which total
approximately 40 percent of is its utility as a political tool.
global GDP. A powerful reason
for trade, in addition to its economic benefits, is its utility as a geopolitical tool.
The TPP is the substantive essence of the Obama Administration’s pivot to Asia.20
The pursuit by the United States of a major regional agreement across the
Pacific as well as another across the Atlantic, combined with the already-negotiated and successful NAFTA, would put the United States firmly back at the
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center of world trade policy. Not only are barriers lowered by such agreements
but standards are also clarified and established. They represent a noncoercive
way of diffusing practices that can benefit workers, consumers, safety, and the
environment.
THE PATH AHEAD
If the WTO did not exist, the world would be a different and less prosperous place. It has contributed to confirming the decades-long reduction in
trade barriers, while also helping governments resist the pressure for protectionist policies when economic difficulties make such policies attractive in
the short term. The desire to qualify for membership in the WTO assisted
those in China eager to transform the nation’s economy by moving in the
direction of the most advanced industrial nations’ economies. The WTO
dispute settlement process has established legitimacy and value, earning
the respect and compliance of participating countries. These accomplishments in a world filled with change are both substantial and admirable.
At the same time, the WTO has failed to realize the most ambitious objectives
of its architects. It now figuratively sits on the sidelines of the quest to reduce
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existing trade barriers. It is the victim of its growth coupled with the need for
consensus from so many. This set of arrangements gives too much power to the
few and unnecessarily limits undertaking measures that are far-reaching. The large
question now is what will happen to the WTO as regional agreements proliferate. If the United States is successful in bringing the TTP and TTIP agreements
to a conclusion, will they effectively displace the WTO as other countries seek
to join one or the other of these large trade agreements? Only time will tell.
The inability of the WTO to accommodate pressures for deeper integration
has undermined the centrality of the multilateral system. This failure has encouraged some countries to sign regional arrangements and to begin negotiating new
plurilateral agreements, such as the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) and the
Information Technology Agreement (ITA), as well as mega-regional agreements,
including the TPP; the TTIP; the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) between the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations; the Pacific Alliance, a Latin American trade bloc; and the Tripartite
Free Trade Area involving three regional economic communities in Africa.
While some regional agreements are driven primarily by political objectives,
others seek deeper integration through common rules for standards, intellectual
property rights, investment treaties, trade facilitation, disciplines on state aid
and state-owned enterprises, regulatory cooperation, and stronger enforcement.
These developments reflect, on the one hand, functional demands for deeper
integration that come from multinational corporations and operators of global
supply chains and, on the other hand, social pressure for fair trade in international
labor standards, competition policies, and environmental standards.
The drive for deeper integration from those seeking to promote trade and
foreign direct investment is anchored in countries that have already undertaken
substantial trade liberalization and that are seeking to advance the interests of
their exporters and multinational corporations. At the same time, a constellation
of forces is resisting deeper integration.
In emerging economies, this opposition is centered on those seeking to
pursue state-led development strategies, promote domestic industrial policies,
maintain state-owned enterprises, protect domestic producers, and limit foreign
investors. Governments in these countries are also concerned about implementing domestic regulatory approaches where they lack the same capacity
as advanced countries to enforce those regulations or where they believe those
approaches are inappropriate to their particular level of development.
In advanced economies, the forces opposing deeper integration are concerned about economic stagnation, jobs, wages, and growing domestic inequal-
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ity. Likewise, these forces view divergent policies with respect to privacy, food
safety, and environmental regulations as major obstacles to negotiations among
advanced economies. Moreover, there are always the vested interests in agricultural and manufacturing that continue to seek protection.
A key question is whether the WTO can respond to restore its centrality
as an effective force for trade liberalization. Doing so will likely require moving
away from a single undertaking towards plurilateral agreements and sectors that
go deeper and general agreements to which all subscribe. WA
NOTES
1. This essay has benefitted from the generously shared insights of Robert Z. Lawrence, Gary N. Horlick,
Richard N. Cooper, Joshua Bolten, Warren H. Maruyama, John M. Herrmann, and Alan Wolff.
2. Jeffrey A. Frankel, “Assessing the Efficiency Gains from Further Liberalization,” in Efficiency, Equity
Legitimacy: The Multilateral Trading System at the Millennium, ed. Roger B. Porter et al. (Washington, DC:
Brookings Institution Press, 2001), 3–15, 81–105.
3. Craig VanGrasstek, The History and Future of the World Trade Organization (Geneva: World Trade
Organization, 2013), 599.
4. Public Law No. 96-39, 93 Stat. 144.
5. For an illuminating and comprehensive account of the creation and history of the WTO, see: VanGrasstek, The History and Future of the World Trade Organization.
6. Roger Porter, “The President, Congress, and Trade Policy,” Congress & The Presidency 15, no. 2
(Autumn 1988): 165–84.
7. For a respectful yet illuminating exchange, see: Roger Porter and Alan Wolff, “Trade Policy and Trade
Politics,” New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 25, no. 2 (Winter 1993): 281–309.
8. For an excellent account of the negotiation, see: Mordechai Kreinin, Building a Partnership: The
Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2000).
9. Rufus Yerxa, a Democrat, was trusted and respected by the Chairman of the Ways and Means
Committee, Dan Rostenkowski, and would later also serve as Deputy U.S. Trade Representative in the
Clinton Administration and as Deputy Director-General of the WTO from 2002–13. He played a major
role in negotiating and securing congressional approval of the Uruguay Round and the WTO agreement.
10. VanGrasstek, The History and Future of the World Trade Organization.
11. The WTO held its Ninth Ministerial Conference in Bali, Indonesia in December 2013.
12. As of 2011, 64.7 percent of the WTO secretariat employees came from Europe; 27.8 percent from
France; 4.3 percent from the United States; and 24.8 percent from developing countries (up from 17.4
percent a decade earlier). See: VanGrasstek, The History and Future of the World Trade Organization, 536.
13. WTO Director-Generals include: Peter Sutherland: 1993–1995 (Ireland), Renato Ruggiero: 1995–
1999 (Italy), Mike Moore: 1999–2002 (New Zealand), Supachai Panitchpakdi: 2002–2005 (Thailand),
Pascal Lamy: 2005–2013 (France), Roberto Azevêdo: 2013–present (Brazil).
14. “Dispute Settlement: Statistics,” World Trade Organization, last updated 2015.
15. WTO Secretariat Dispute DS309, “China: Value Added Tax on Integrated Circuits,” World Trade
Organization.
16. Public Law No. 93-618, 19 U.S.C. 2411.
17. C. Fred Bergsten, “Globalizing Free Trade,” Foreign Affairs 75, no. 3 (May/June 1996): 108.
18. World Trade Organization, WTO Annual Report 2014 (Geneva: World Trade Organization, 2014), 9.
19. In addition to the United States, the countries participating in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore,
and Vietnam.
20. Michael Froman, “Why Trade Matters,” Foreign Affairs 93, no. 6 (November/December 2014).
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