ABSTRACT
As long as the EU and the US have not yet concluded the TTIP negotiations and implemented this potential bilateral agreement, their trade relations are mainly governed by the WTO law, their trade talks are largely held under the auspices of the WTO in the Doha Round and the management of their trade conflicts abides by the rules and procedures found in the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU). Thus, observing the interactions between those two trading powers in the multilateral forum might give a good idea of what the pace, the tone and the content of the ambitious talks launched by the giant transatlantic economic partners will be. With this approach, we first propose a brief retrospective of the Doha Round negotiations. We then examine the trade preferences expressed by the EU and the US in WTO fora and see what divides them and what brings them closer. We finally have a look at the way the two powers manage their trade disputes.
