| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper examines United States (US)-China trade disputes under the World Trade Organization (WTO) and argues that both countries are increasingly resorting to the WTO's dispute settlement mechanism to target issues of most critical concern to their respective domestic constituencies. While the United States' WTO complaints against China tend to challenge Chinese industrial policy, cases involving anti-dumping and countervailing duties dominate China's WTO disputes against the United States. In addition, the significant expansion of bilateral trade relations in the past decades has provided opportunities for Chinese leaders to identify or to threaten retaliation against anti-protectionist groups in the United States in order to mobilize them against the disputed measure. Overall, United States-China trade disputes under the WTO increasingly reflect a distinctive political logic whereby domestic political considerations not only figure prominently in the decision to launch WTO disputes, but also frequently influence the way the dispute is played out either within or outside of the WTO framework.
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