The safeguards mess revisited: the fundamental problem

Abstract

In the November 2003 issue of this journal, Alan Sykes describes the WTO Safeguards Agreement (SA) as ‘a mess’ (Sykes, 2003). The author sets out to show that the criteria for using safeguards protection under WTO rules, and Appellate Body (AB) decisions related to dispute settlement cases over such protection, are incoherent. Any use of protection under the SA therefore appears doomed to being struck down in a WTO challenge. The author believes that the AB could rectify this situation in the form of guidelines to make safeguards protection operational, assuming that such protection should be used in the first place.