WTO

In a time when the views of the European Union and the United States of America appear to be drifting further apart each day, long-standing issues are resurfacing once again. Tim Josling’s 2006 article “The War on Terroir” describes the transatlantic trade conflict between the U.S. and the EU concerning Geographical Indications (GIs) through the lense of…

Here we go again? Last weekend saw yet another shock to the system, as the US and Israel launched an armed attack on Iran: the last week on the blog has seen some initial reactions. These are joined by analyses of the hard-fought (and already faltering?) EU-Mercosur trade agreement, regional shifts in dispute settlement under UNCLOS, an apparently…

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is under a prolonged stress test, as its Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala termed recently in a Financial Times article. This stress test is not unique; it is happening also to other international economic organizations (IEOs), as globalization shrinks and unilateralism spreads. An international organization seems much too vulnerable, facing the ongoing, tumultuous…

Energy costs have been rising, particularly in Europe following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This price hike is a major blow to heavy industries for which energy makes up a large part of the cost of production. The issue has been further exacerbated by the fact that the affected products are mostly commodities. As a result, producers…