ABSTRACT
On December 4 1999, disagreement between the US and the majority of WTO members over making competition policy and antidumping agenda items for the so-called ‘millennium round’ of trade negotiations were decisive in bringing the Seattle summit to a sudden halt. To some, it appeared imperative to extend the scope of GATT/WTO law from its current focus on public border measures to those domestic policies and private actions threatening to foreclose markets, distort competition and impair the benefits of liberalization. For that reason, the EU proposed to require WTO members to enforce competition laws in line with shared principles for cases with an international dimension and to agree to agency cooperation and binding dispute settlement.1 Conversely, the United States, while appreciating the need for collaboration among authorities, saw no value in a trade-focused forum setting minimum competition standards, or ‘second-guessing complex national prosecutorial decisions.’2 Moreover, it was held that, in the absence of global consensus on economic, legal and procedural principles, efforts to harmonize fairly diverse sets of national regulations would result in lowest-common-denominator rules that weaken and politicize national antitrust enforcement. Hence, the US intended to limit themselves to case-based procedural cooperation and maintain a discretionary, common-law approach. And yet, some statutory initiative seemed vital lest discriminatory trade measures continue to undermine the integrity of international trade accords and their constraining impact on domestic protectionism. Antidumping presents the case in point.
