Supply Chain Research

The U.S. is looking for ways to avoid using the WTO in its trade policy in the future. That would fit with plans for bilateral deals, but won’t stop other countries complaining about the U.S. In total the U.S. has filed 77 WTO complaints since 1995, including 15 since 2008. By contrast it has launched 248 trade cases under its own legislation between 2008 and 2016, of which 118 were against China. These take a year to complete, are targeted and require a complainant. A move to self-initiated cases and treating currency manipulation as a subsidy could change all that.