Further thoughts on WTO dispute settlement Remarks of Alan Wm. Wolff

concerns would be, first: • In their bilateral dispute settlement understanding, to require that panels and the equivalent of the Appellate Body, when reviewing the use of trade remedies, take fully into account the likely effect of their decisions on workers. [...] This is remarkably similar to the opening words of the Marrakech Agreement Establishing the WTO, which invokes the objective for WTO Members “that their relations in the field of trade and economic endeavour should be conducted with a view to raising standards of living, ensuring full employment and a large and steadily growing volume of real income and effective demand, and expanding the producti. [...] Living by the gun in the Wild West of new-found policy space of necessity involves the prospect of dying by the gun, or at least being wounded. [...] What would a change in attitude mean in practice? In determining whether “unforeseen developments” exist to allow the use of a safeguard, there is a cost to adopting a reading of the WTO’s rules that nullifies having a working safeguards agreement. [...] The idea of giving the Chair of the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) a more activist role and creating a small dispute settlement group around her is likewise to create another voice so that the judiciary is not alone as the arbiter of what the rules of the trading system are to be.