Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, global trade and the rules-based multilateral trading system have experienced unprecedented disruptions and mounting challenges. While COVID-19 is a well-known cause, many other problems are arguably more fundamental and hence likely to have a systemic and enduring impact. One prominent problem concerns the nexus between trade and sustainability. The early 2000s were dominated by ‘trade and … ’ debates that explored the intersection of trade and environmental and social values. Since the mid-2010s, however, that nexus has been increasingly warped through the rise of economic nationalism and (green) industrial policy, the escalation of geopolitics, and strategic competition among major powers, amongst other factors. Cumulatively, these disruptions and challenges have pushed governments to shift their thinking, strategies, priorities, and even their definition of the ‘end goal’ of trade policy. With trade increasingly being viewed as a means rather than the end, resilience, diversification, national security, inclusiveness, and sustainability have become possible end goals of trade policy.

Recent years have seen an increased focus on the implementation of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs). While the number of PTAs has risen remarkably since early 2000, data on the utilization of preferential tariffs under these agreements point out that some businesses have not gained access to all the benefits that PTAs can provide. When utilization rates are low, the impact of the agreement will likely differ from what was anticipated by ex-ante economic research. This paper conducts a dynamic Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) analysis of the expected impact of the EU–Japan Economic Partnership Agreement and compares a scenario that includes realistic preference utilization data with a standard scenario where all tariff liberalization is assumed to be fully utilized by businesses. The results show considerable differences between the two scenarios and illustrate the need to make the inclusion of credible utilization data standard practice in the modelling of international trade.

This paper addresses the persistent ambiguity in the evaluation of legitimate expectations within investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS), critically examining this through Fuller’s interactional theory. Traditional approaches fail to adequately capture the evolving socio-economic contexts and the dynamic nature of investor–state interactions. This paper introduces a novel analytical model that integrates Fuller’s principles, emphasizing continuous dialogue and mutual understanding between investors and host states. By shifting focus from static legal interpretations to interaction-based assessments, this framework provides a more equitable and context-sensitive method for adjudicating legitimate expectations. The research offers significant academic contributions by redefining the foundational principles of legitimate expectations in ISDS, highlighting the necessity of procedural fairness and shared understanding. Practically, it proposes actionable guidelines for tribunals and policymakers to enhance the legitimacy and predictability of investment arbitration. This includes revising bilateral investment treaties (BITs) for explicit policy disclosure and fostering ongoing communication between parties. The adoption of Fuller’s interactional theory in ISDS not only clarifies legal ambiguities but also promotes a more cooperative and transparent investment climate, ultimately benefiting both investors and host states.

This Review has occasionally taken note of the passing of individuals who have made seminal contributions to the public international law of international trade.1 When Frieder Roessler died on 25 July 2024, the editors undertook to memorialize Frieder's legacy with a Symposium about Frieder the international civil servant, Frieder the scholar and teacher, Frieder the institution builder in advocacy for the legal rights of developing countries, and Frieder the friend to admirers around the world and over the course of several decades.

The second Trump Administration, in office since January 2025, has disrupted the prevailing trade consensus. The corner stone of the new US trade policy is the re-introduction of old-style tariffs at substantial levels to create a so-called ‘tariff wall’ turning away from long-standing practices of tariff liberalization. According to the US Administration, the tariffs pursue multiple objectives. They incentivize re-industrialization, generate revenue, and lower trade deficits with many trading partners. The imposition of new tariffs is coupled with the pursuit of bilateral deals to extract business-type concessions from governments and to encourage investments into the US.

In 2025, the United States raised tariffs to rates not seen for more than a century. These tariffs were not part of a carefully designed industrial strategy. Instead, the second Trump administration distanced itself from existing industrial policy initiatives and indicated a desire to roll back government-funded subsidies for businesses. This article examines the rationale behind the United States’ pivot from subsidies to tariffs and explores implications for trade partners and multilateral institutions.

The 2022 Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies (AFS) is the culmination of over 20 years of negotiations within the WTO's Doha Development Round. Although it can be considered a small victory in the fight against declining fish stocks, the Agreement remains unfinished and underdeveloped. Of particular concern is the enforceability of the Agreement. While WTO Members recognize that the AFS was created to deal with a problem that has both socioeconomic and environmental implications, the Agreement relies on established WTO dispute settlement rules, which were created to resolve trade disputes. The paper assesses the difficulties of enforcing the AFS under these rules and considers additional provisions that could be included in subsequent negotiating rounds to ensure an effective and enforceable agreement. Recommendations cover different stages of the dispute settlement process and include alternative means of dispute resolution, measures to expedite proceedings, and retaliation procedures adapted to the AFS.

On 25 February 2024, the final text of the Investment Facilitation for Development (IFD) Agreement was released, marking a pivotal moment in the reform of International Investment Law (IIL). This article examines the trajectory of IIL through the lens of three distinct phases – investment protection, liberalization, and, now, investment facilitation – arguing that this latest phase represents a ‘third configuration’ of the field. While past reforms have struggled with legitimacy crises and governance limitations, investment facilitation introduces a ‘risk-capacity’ approach that prioritizes trust-building, regulatory coherence, and sustainable investment governance. By analyzing the well-designed mechanisms of the IFD Agreement, this article demonstrates how investment facilitation transforms IIL from a power-driven framework into a capacity-enhancing system, reducing its marginalization and fostering inclusivity among World Trade Organization (WTO) members. Finally, this study outlines potential next steps for the IFD Agreement, emphasizing its role as a blueprint for future multilateral investment governance.

Industrial policy interventions affecting international trade and investment are motivated by a mix of economic and non-economic objectives. Some are explicitly protectionist, targeting an expansion of domestic production; others are not but have adverse impacts on trade, reducing the potential role of trade as a means to help attain non-economic objectives efficiently. The prospects for open trade to contribute to the realization of non-economic objectives are enhanced if states consider the extent to which they have similar goals and cooperate in designing industrial policies to attain them. Cooperation to attenuate negative spillovers and improve the prospects of attaining underlying goals is in the self-interest of states. Arguments that international cooperation on industrial policy is politically infeasible or constitutes an undesirable erosion of sovereignty are misconceived given the significant opportunity costs of uncoordinated unilateral industrial policy interventions.

The signing of the Agreement Establishing the Advisory Centre on WTO Law (ACWL) was the most positive outcome to occur during WTO's Seattle Ministerial Conference in 1999. After two years of preparatory work, the ACWL then began operations in 2001.

The Dispute Settlement Mechanism (DSM), once regarded as the jewel in the crown of the World Trade Organization (WTO), has been facing a variety of serious criticisms for its inherent limitations and problems while its appellate review function has been paralyzed. Discussions on the reform of the WTO DSM have been under way for several years now. Many key items are on the reform agenda, one of which is to introduce Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) proceedings to the WTO DSM. Among several options of ADR, ‘mediation’ can offer an important set of tools for the WTO and its Members to resolve disputes in a more efficient and prompt manner. If properly structured, mediation can complement the existing binding proceedings of panels and the Appellate Body. At the same time, introduction of mediation to the WTO DSM may also cause additional legal and practical problems. It may cause further delays, confidentiality traps, due process myriads, and enforcement loopholes. It is vital to introduce mediation provisions to address those critical problems. Systematized and structuralized mediation in the WTO DSM will be able to offer a viable alternative path to resolve certain complex and sensitive disputes.

The Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies is designed to promote fisheries sustainability by curbing harmful subsidies that contribute to overfishing and overcapacity. However, the current approach to applying unconditional and non-negotiable special and differential treatment provisions in the Agreement is based on a North–South binary division and essentially fails to achieve the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 14.6. This article explores the linkage between sustainable development and a conditional right to special and differential treatment, and further presents a conditionality approach to applying appropriate and effective special and differential treatment that necessarily takes into account the diverse needs of different developing countries and better reconciles with economic, environmental, and societal sustainability. A conditionality approach shifts the basis of special and differential treatment from self-claimed ‘developing country’ status to multi-dimensions conditions embedded in the Agreement that can be objectively identified and assessed to achieve fisheries sustainability.

Amid a new era of disruption spawned by looming climate threats and significant geopolitical tensions, an increasing number of countries have favored a more robust green industrial policy (GIP) to reduce carbon emissions and achieve other economic, political, and geostrategic objectives. The use of multi-purpose GIPs not only raises questions regarding the policies' compatibility with the World Trade Organization (WTO) rules but also, more broadly, profoundly implicates the interface between energy, trade, and the environment. This article selects China, the United States, and the European Union as case studies and provides a thorough analysis of the specific text and context of their GIPs to identify the new trends that deviate from past practices in order to capture the policy transformation. It highlights the disruptively adverse implications of the multi-purpose GIPs on the multilateral trading system. However, the WTO has an opportunity to mitigate such disruptions and avoid a seemingly unavoidable clash by facilitating international cooperation and coordination in the design and implementation of multi-purpose GIPs, particularly among major clean energy producer countries. In doing so, the WTO can strengthen its credibility and stability while also minimizing the misalignment of the diverse objectives and ensuring the decarbonization efforts will not undermined.

This article considers the reciprocal duties proposed by the US administration, 2 April 2025. These are large import tariffs that will significantly disrupt the world trading system. Rather than considering the economic impacts of these tariffs, as others have and are doing, this article documents the rationale used to justify these destructive tariffs and their calculation. Using descriptive examples, the proposed duties are shown to be unfounded as reciprocal and generally ill advised.

Frieder Roessler made an indelible mark not just on the Advisory Centre on WTO Law (ACWL), but on the entire rules-based multilateral trading system. He made unique, durable contributions that will continue to benefit the system for many years to come.

This paper examines the likely economic consequences of a unilateral US trade policy, particularly those involving across-the-board tariffs and retreat from multilateral commitments. Drawing on computable general equilibrium (CGE) models, dynamic macroeconomic frameworks, and a rich body of empirical literature, the paper demonstrates that the static efficiency losses, estimated by standard trade models, understate the true costs of protectionism. It identifies five key amplification channels – loss of economies of scale, supply chain fragility, diminished technological spillovers, investment hold-up under policy uncertainty, and financial market reactions – that interact to depress both short-run output and long-run growth potential. The analysis estimates that comprehensive unilateral trade measures could reduce US GDP by 2–3% in the short term and lower the long-term growth trajectory by 0.4–0.7 percentage points annually. While some strategic interventions may yield resilience or national security benefits, the paper concludes that unilateralism generates systemic economic risks and should be approached with caution. The findings underscore the need for integrated policy frameworks that combine targeted trade tools with domestic support and international cooperation.

The exponential growth of cross-border data flows and fragmented national and regional data protection standards have intensified regulatory challenges in global trade. The effects of regulatory divergence are amplified by a lack of transparency, potentially masking discriminatory practices. Article VII of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) offers a framework for recognition agreements to bridge these gaps but is not utilized in practice. This paper examines the interplay between GATS Article VII and the EU data adequacy decisions – currently the most comprehensive bilateral framework for assessing compatibility between data protection regimes among other WTO members. It argues that data adequacy frameworks qualify as recognition agreements/arrangements under GATS, offering potential to reduce the trade effects of differences in data protection laws globally while safeguarding regulatory autonomy. A roadmap for leveraging Article VII to advance international alignment is developed to help realize the dual goals of enhancing global cooperation and strengthening privacy protection.

In an era marked by the ‘technologization’ of modern warfare and the privatization of military supply chains, numerous items possess dual-use potential, capable of serving both civilian and military ends. Concurrently, governments increasingly view the acquisition of specific goods, materials, services, and technologies by rival states as a threat to their security. As a result, economic restrictions imposed on dual-use items, including export controls, have proliferated in recent years. These measures have elicited concerns regarding disguised protectionism and potential non-compliance with trade agreements. Central to the debate is the difficulty to strike a balance between addressing legitimate security imperatives and preventing economic protectionism. This article delves into the intersection of trade and security in the regulation of dual-use goods. It offers a focused examination of Article XXI(b)(ii) of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) concerning trade restrictions on products destined for military use. The paper first reveals limitations of this provision in governing the regulation of dual-use items. Furthermore, it introduces the concept of a ‘purpose test’ provided by the provision as a safeguard against abusive invocation. Lastly, it sheds light on the challenge posed by the standard of proof issue, which complicates the review and mitigation of bad-faith invocations of security exceptions.

Multifaceted geopolitical conflicts have led to disruptions in the trade regime and multilateral negotiations. As a paradigm shift, green regionalism has emerged as a new normative process for regional economic frameworks to integrate and operationalize environmental sustainability. The article offers the first interdisciplinary analysis of green regionalism in world trade law. It argues that green regionalism, which has evolved amid various waves of global regionalism, constructs the normative foundation for ‘Trade and Sustainability 2.0’. The article employs the concept of recognition in international relations to unveil the motivations and actions of major states in catalyzing green regionalism. Legal and political challenges confronting the Environmental Goods Agreement of the World Trade Organization, environmental agreements, and mega-trade agreements are also examined. Second, the article explores the multipolar frameworks for implementing green regionalism. Case studies involving recent developments of US and EU trade pacts, as well as of new Asia-Pacific green economy agreements, shed light on the trade-sustainability nexus. Hence, the theoretical and empirical implications of the research are valuable for devising trade law approaches to advancing Sustainable Development Goals.