RESUMEN
Unhappy with the rulings of the WTO dispute settlement system, which disproportionately targeted US use of trade remedies, the United States ended the entire system in 2019. There are multiple hurdles to agreeing to new terms of trade remedy use and thus potentially restoring some form of binding dispute settlement. First, a change would affect access to policy flexibility by the now large number of users of trade remedies. Second, although China's exports are the overwhelming target of trade remedies, exporters in other countries increasingly find themselves caught up in trade remedy actions linked to China. Third, critical differences posed by China's economic model may call for new rules for trade remedies, but no consensus on those rules has emerged. Even some of the most promising reforms have practical limitations, create additional challenges, or may be politically unviable.
RESUMEN
Many months after COVID-19 vaccines were first authorised for public use, still limited supplies could only partially reduce the devastating loss of life and economic costs caused by the pandemic. Could additional vaccine doses have been manufactured more quickly some other way? Would alternative policy choices have made a difference? This paper provides a simple analytical framework through which to view the contours of the vaccine value chain. It then creates a new database that maps the COVID-19 vaccines of Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca/Oxford, Johnson & Johnson, Novavax and CureVac to the product- and location-specific manufacturing supply chains that emerged in 2020 and 2021. It describes the choppy process through which dozens of other companies at nearly 100 geographically distributed facilities came together to scale up global manufacturing. The paper catalogues major pandemic policy initiatives - such as the United States' Operation Warp Speed - that are likely to have affected the timing and formation of those vaccine supply chains. Given the data, a final section identifies further questions for researchers and policymakers.
RESUMEN
Why consult and empanel, if the respondent can appeal into the void? ‘Appeal into the void’ meant that an appeal could be lodged, but would never be decided in the absence of an Appellate Body to adjudicate it. Since the possibility to appeal has not been repealed, as of 1 January 2020, appealed panel reports have no legal significance. [...]the first-ever WTO dispute involving the national security exception was adjudicated. The panel found that the USDOC had erroneously aggregated export price differences when applying the DPM, but departed from the Appellate Body's previous ruling in US–Washing Machines regarding the use of zeroing and the inclusion of differential prices under Article 2.4.2 of the Anti-Dumping Agreement. [...]Australia identified those subsidies as a ‘particular market situation’ under Article 2.2 of the WTO's Antidumping Agreement and, because of that, disregarded domestic quantities in the computations of the dumping margins.
RESUMEN
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, a global shortage of hospital gowns, gloves, surgical masks, and respirators caused policymakers globally to panic. China increased imports and decreased exports of this personal protective equipment, removing supplies from world markets. Shortages led to European Union and US export controls as well as other extraordinary policy actions, including a US effort to reserve supplies manufactured in China by a US-headquartered multinational. By April 2020, China's exports had mostly resumed, and over the rest of the year its export volumes surged. But China's export prices also skyrocketed and remained elevated through 2020, reflecting severe and continued shortages. This paper explores these and other government actions, such as US trade war tariffs and US industrial policy in the form of over $1?billion of subsidies to build out its domestic personal protective equipment supply chain, as well as potential lessons for future pandemic preparedness and international policy cooperation.