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T.R.A.D.E. Working Papers 22 INTRODUCTION (excerpt)At the turn of the twenty-first century, the development of economic globalization is accelerating and the interdependent relationship between nations is deepening. The World Trade Organization (WTO), the so-called Economic United Nations, has been in operation for more than ten years. In this context, the world trading system of global multilateralism is further strengthening. However, strong unilateralism, the adversary of global multilateralism, originating from the contemporary sole superpower, the United States, has not been ready to concede voluntarily to the WTO multilateralism. During the latest decade, this superpower has been persistently, and by hook or by crook, imposing obstacles to impede the solidifying and strengthening of global multilateralism in the hope of maintaining its economic hegemonic status of unilateralism. Usually such unilateral behaviour is conducted under the camouflage of defending U.S. sovereignty, safeguarding U.S. interests, and enforcing U.S. law. New evidence of this is the mighty disturbance of the U.S. Trade Act’s Section 201 and the chain of disputes ignited by the United States in March of 2002 within the WTO, specifically in the area of the international steel trade. These disputes were collectively decided by the WTO Panel in United States – Definitive Safeguard Measures on Imports of Certain Steel Products. Taking a macro view, the recent disputes concerning the U.S. Trade Act’s Section 201 (Section 201 Disputes) are nothing but the third big round of confrontations between U.S. unilateralism and WTO multilateralism during the last decade. Its occurrence is never occasional or isolated. It has been closely connected with, and continues from, the first and second big rounds of the same confrontation: “The Great 1994 Sovereignty Debate” in the United States, and the disputes over the U.S. Trade Act’s Section 301 (Section 301 Disputes) that occurred in the WTO during 1998-2000.
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