Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2005
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199282623.003.0013
Abstract
This chapter explains why the dynamic of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations tends to lead to the progressive liberalization of market-access barriers promoting consumer welfare. As all agreements tend to be ‘incomplete’, it is a legitimate task of WTO judges to clarify progressively the WTO requirements of nondiscriminatory treatment of like goods and of like services. The additional requirements, in the WTO Agreements on Technical Barriers to Trade and on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards, to base restrictive measures on the ‘necessity principle’ and on ‘scientific evidence’, offer useful ‘double checks’ for judicial identification of protectionist measures. While the WTO rules on non-discriminatory market access offer weak safeguards for consumer welfare, the WTO's contingent protection instruments protect import-competing producers from ‘injurious competition’ without regard to consumer welfare. Finally, this chapter concludes that ‘the WTO rules are producer-oriented’ and need to be changed by governments committed to promotion of consumer welfare.
Disciplines
International Economics | International Trade Law | Law
Recommended Citation
Petros C. Mavroidis,
Come Together? Producer Welfare, Consumer Welfare, and WTO Rules,
Reforming the World Trading System: Legitimacy, Efficiency, and Democratic Governance, Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann (Ed.), Cambridge University Press
(2005).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/4333
Comments
This material has been published in "Reforming the World Trading System: Legitimacy, Efficiency, and Democratic Governance", edited by Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann. This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution or re-use.