The year in international trade law: challenges and reform

• Author: Jesse Kreier
• Position: Teaches international trade law at Georgetown University Law Center and at American University's Washington College of Law, and he consults on international trade law matters
• Pages: 571-574

FOREWORD

THE YEAR IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE LAW:

CHALLENGES AND REFORM

JESSE KREIER*

It has been another tumultuous year for international trade policy. In

the United States, an aggressively mercantilist Trump Administration has

been replaced by a new, more internationalist Biden Administration. This

regime change has been received hopefully by many, both in the United

States and elsewhere, who feared that Trump’s confrontational and uni-

lateralist approach to trade policy might deal a fatal blow to the rules-

based multilateral trading system.

Despite the more diplomatic tone in Washington, the underlying

conditions that fueled the Trump trade agenda—the rise of China,

growing income inequality and economic insecurity in the West, and

doubts about the benefits of an open trading system—remain

unchanged.

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Further, the dissatisfaction in many developed nations

about the operation of the current trading system, and the populism

which accompanies it, finds a counterpart in much of the developing

world, even if the diagnosis of the problems differs significantly.

In these circumstances, the debate now raging about the future of

the international trading system has twodimensions. First, trade policy-

makers, and of course international trade lawyers, are wrestling with

the fallout from decisions taken over the past few years and their impli-

cations. Can ongoing U.S.-China trade tensions be managed, and how?

Will the increasing reliance on national security-justified measures be

controlled, and what role can international rules play in this regard?

What will Britain’s role in the international trading community look

like, post Brexit? What is the future of investor-state dispute settlement?

* Jesse Kreier teaches international trade law at Georgetown University Law Center and at

American University’s Washington College of Law, and he consults on international trade law

matters. From 1992 to 2018 he was a member of the WTO Secretariat’s Rules Division, serving as

legal officer, Counsellor, Chief Legal Officer and ultimately Acting Director. From 1987 to 1992

he practiced international trade law at Dewey Ballantine in Washington, DC. Mr. Kreier holds a

B.A. from Johns Hopkins University and a J.D. and Masters of Science in Foreign Service from

Georgetown University. He clerked for the Honorable Donald Burnett, Jr. at the Idaho Court of

Appeals.V

C2021, Jesse Kreier.

1. See, e.g., Don Lee, Trump and Biden on trade: Same diagnosis, different prescription, L.A. TIMES

(Oct. 5, 2020), https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-08-19/trump-biden-trade-policy.

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