What to make of the outcome of MC12?

There are two camps: many celebrate the agreements as historic; others see the substance as meagre and mostly an exercise in self-preservation.

There is truth in both views but they also miss an important dimension of what was achieved. A🧵 There is no question that history was made yesterday morning:
- The 🐟 ag. is the 1st WTO treaty with a primarily environmental objective
- The 🐟 ag. is the 2nd fully-fledged new multilateral ag. in WTO history
- The Marrakesh Ag. was amended for the 3rd time in WTO history

It was a pleasure to discuss "WTO Plurilaterals - Unlocking the System, or Breaking it?" with Gabrielle Marceau, Myrto Zambarta, and @Jamesnedumpara, and Amb Mina (@AusWTO).

The video is available here:

A short 🧵with my presentation:

@IHEID @_CTEI Plurilaterals were the norm for trade negotiations in the GATT years: we often think of the Tokyo Round codes as examples, but tariff bargains, including the original GATT, were plurilateral in nature as well. Why did countries adopt this approach? I identify three rationales:

What role can the WTO play in the trade wars? In a new paper, I argue that the participants should use the WTO’s mechanisms for the “rebalancing” of obligations, such as non-violation claims, to keep their disputes in the trade regime. Here’s a summary 1/ papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… I see three benefits of keeping the trade wars within the WTO in some form: 1. it could reduce tensions; 2. it strengthens the regime; and 3. the regime's mechanisms can solve disagreements at the margins, thereby preventing retaliatory spirals. So how could it be done? 2/

In my new post, I argue that WTO Members should start negotiating a DSU 2.0:
- negotiating without the need for consensus changes the dynamic;
- if Members can't agree on a common vision for WTO DS, a DSU 2.0 would pave the way for pluralism in WTO DS.
worldtradelaw.typepad.com/ielpblog/ What happens if WTO Members don’t start negotiating a DSU 2.0? They might get lucky if Trump loses the election and a new USTR agrees to reform the system. More likely, however, they will end up resigning themselves to losing the AB and with it binding WTO DS in its current form.

My paper “How Should We Think About Winners and Losers? Three Narratives and Their Implications for the Redesign of Int Econ Agts” is now on SSRN. I argue that the Trump, Establishment and Critical narratives each have irreducible normative elements /1 papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… I argue that the Trump narrative is structured around a "jobs-as-property" metaphor, according to which US workers are entitled to their jobs in a way that is akin to a property right; this rings true for workers who feel that their jobs are bound up with identity and status. /2

My post on why WTO Members should bring pure non-violation claims against national security measures is now up on the IELP blog. Short version: you can't lose, it should be fast(er), nobody gets upset, you preserve the WTO, and you get what really matters: worldtradelaw.typepad.com/ielpblog/2018/… Thanks to @snlester for posting it and to @JAHillmanGULaw for encouraging me to write it. Previous twitter discussions on this issues are here

https://twitter.com/nicolas_lamp/status/1006427399209324544

and here

https://twitter.com/nicolas_lamp/status/1009429896102326272