June 23, 2025
It is that time of the year, once again, when marking is on its way (or close to its end) and lecturers have to start reviewing the past academic year’s courses and think about changes to make in the coming year.
I am in that process too and next year I will have to teach a full 60-hour module on international trade law in my new home institution.
Events in recent months have changed much of how we have perceived international trade relations previously. Liberation Day was a watershed, not just in itself, but also because it represented the pinnacle of a process of change started many years ago that has somewhat reached its highest degree of maturity. The World Trade Organisation, and its rule-book, are in trouble. Surely, and I would wholeheartedly agree, there is much blood left in the veins of the system. This wonderful institution carries on with its tasks on a day-by-day basis, with important committee work and providing the platform for discussion for many Members. Dispute settlement too, for long being considered moribund, has shown important signs of life with important disputes in the pipeline (which are partly consequential to the crisis of the system). All this granted, it is also true that the world trading system is facing serious existential difficulties. Its key architect – the United States – are completely disengaged. They have killed the Appellate Body in 2019 and are not financially contributing to the organisation for two years now. Domestically, they are discussing about whether to leave the organisation altogether (this is a repeat in history: go back 20 years: similar discussions but no sufficient support to leave: relief? Yes, but the seeds of discontent had been planted already). Transparency in important areas, such as industrial subsidies, do not work. The reasons can be many, but, if we are serious about the issue, they are mostly linked to a wrong incentive-structure. Quite simply, by simply relying on Member States’ notifications, the system cannot work. Finally, the WTO rule-book (remember: the WTO’s big change vis-à-vis the GATT was a further upgrade towards the “legalisation” of the system, i.e. the governing of trade relations through a detailed body of legal rules) is not up-to-date to the current challenges. The chances are that many important rules are quite simply ignored and there are no incentives/procedural tools good enough for those that would like to signal breaches. The consensus rule and the significant divergence in interests of Members – especially the leaders, those that can garner consensus – is almost proverbial by now, eliminating the necessary political condition for the system to function and reform itself from the inside.
At the same time, with the crisis of the world trading system, momentous changes have happened out of the house. Normative action has continued but out of the WTO. The spectacular development of preferential trade agreements (with, according to WTO stats, almost 400 currently into force) is known. Importantly, many of those include WTO + and WTO extra chapters and provisions. They are new labs for experimentation. But what cannot be done by consensus with friends and allies is inevitably regulated unilaterally. Especially the very recent years have seen a flurry of unilateral (or autonomous) initiatives being adopted by many countries – see the US and the EU in particular. While in many cases the WTO and its rules are explicitly recognised as the appropriate forum for law reform, it is equally recognised that this is currently impossible.
Trump II and Liberation day came as the final straw. And I am not forgetting a broader international relations picture were compliance with international law is seriously put into question.
Readers should forgive me for this blurb. But, I suppose that, by now, the motivation of this post is clear. We cannot teach trade law as we used to do it 10 or even 5 years ago!
We are arguably at a critical juncture in history of international (trade) law and relations. Syllabi must duly reflect this. What you find below is really no more than a shopping list (more to come during the Summer).
- What we cover: include and give proper space to PTAs and unilateral measures. Syllabi cannot focus on the multilateral system of trade and on the WTO only. Clearly, the WTO and its law still represent the foundations, in many respects the benchmark and platform of the system, but there is much more to it now. That is why I have been teaching PTAs and their laws – especially using the WTO as standard and comparing the two – for few years now. Perhaps, in 2026, this re-focusing must become clearer and more pronounced. It is not only about PTAs though. It is ineveitably that modern trade law syllabi also include a proper analysis of unilateral measures. That might have happened in the past already in the US (with, for example, s 301) or in the EU (with an introduction to EU trade law) but now we need more. There are quite simply too many and important unilateral domestic measures that directly or indirectly regulate trade in the pursuit of important economic and non-economic objectives, and are often specifically pitted against WTO law, that no good trade law course can simply ignore them.
- Textbooks: not only WTO law please. To the best of my knowledge, there is no textbook in the market (at least in the English language: PS: I will have a further complication next year, since my 60-year module is in Italian …) that reflect the current balance and content of international trade relations. They are all centered on the WTO and its laws, at times this comes out from the title already. Any reference to, for example, PTAs is just en passant, truly. You can find pieces that reflect the current balance only a) on very specific topics and b) published in edited collections/journals in the very recent years/months. This major gap will have an influence on reading lists in the short term, though it will clearly be amended in new textbooks editions or indeed in new books altogether (I myself am toying with the idea of starting to put down my lectures as an embryonic core of a future textbook.)
- Placing trade within the broader international law context. A good hypothesis to test (better: it has been positively tested already!) is that trade law is increasingly linked to issues that pertained to other areas of international law in the past. Think about security. Even the assumption that it was a sub-regime in international law is starting to be put into question. Think about the role that counter-measures may play in the system. Think about the fall of the AB and the return to arbitration. There may be other examples but these should be sufficient to make the point that most topics must be analysed with significant (but appropriate) reference to general international law and, once again, comparisons and parallels. Ultimately, this exercise should help students thinking about the role and nature of international (trade) law and dispute settlement themselves.
- Taking inter-disciplinarity seriously. International trade law has always been naturally looked at through the lens of other disciplines, mostly economics and international relations. Well, this, in my view, has to be taken to a completely new level. Introduction to basic economic and IR ideas underlying current and prospective rules and standards is of the essence. To simply study rules, in the current scenario where rules are quite simply old and/or ignored, would not take students’ learning that far … quite simply, increase their confusion, frustration and sense of irrelevance of the subject. And if we lose the new generations, we are, really, fucked up!
lucaslaws 