Suggestions Regarding the WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism in Strengthening Multilateralism

Abstract

Amid the outbreak of the US-China trade war from March 22, 2018, to July 6, 2018, the United States government announced trade enforcement actions against China. This was based on an investigation conducted following Section 301 of US Trade Law. Responding to the announcement, the Chinese government retorted with claims of possible countermeasures against the US, citing the Foreign Trade Law of China. At the beginning 74 days of the trade war, the US and China filed three motions for negotiations with the WTO Settlement Body over intellectual property and tariff issues before the US imposed an additional import tariff on China officially. From the start to now, the United States and China have filed eight consultations with the WTO dispute settlement body (DSB). However, no applications have yet provided effective legal support to resolve the trade dispute between these two nations or succeeded to uphold multilateralism. This reflects the weakness of the WTO Settlement Mechanism in upholding multilateralism. With analysis and comparison of the occurrence of the US-China trade war and the eight cases brought by China and the US to the WTO DSB during the trade war easily, two shortcomings of the WTO dispute resolution process in upholding multilateralism and the reasons for them are revealed. Based on this, relevant solutions are proposed.