Investment issues at the WTO: the architecture of rules and the settlement of disputes

Abstract

This paper analyses the treatment of investment issues at the World Trade Organization (WTO), with an emphasis on foreign direct investment (FDI). The investment-related provisions of four agreements are evaluated: the agreement on Trade Related Investment Measures (TRIMs), the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), the agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), and the agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCMs). In fact only the GATS has significantly expanded coverage of FDI issues directly, though with many sectoral exceptions in the schedules of national commitments. An analysis of 115 dispute cases that entered the WTO dispute settlement process during 1995-97, plus 325 cases at the GATT during 1948-94, indicates that although investment issues are receiving more attention in the WTO than in the GATT, there have thus far been relatively few investment issues explicitly raised in WTO disputes. A consideration of the prospects for the evolution of investment issues at the WTO during the next several years suggests that they will receive increasing attention, especially within the context of reviews of the TRIMs agreement and the GATS. Copyright 1998 by Oxford University Press.