The US has already tanked the WTO’s credibility

In response to the ruling, a spokesman for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative predictably reiterated that the WTO “has no authority” to review national security issues and announced: “We do not intend to remove the Section 232 duties as a result of these disputes.” The spokesman also hinted the United States will appeal the ruling into the legal abyss of the absence of a sitting Appellate Body—which would have the effect of denying to the prevailing countries their treaty right of lawfully applying economic sanctions against the United States, should the U.S. choose not to comply with the panel rulings and recommendations. The U.S. view that the WTO has no legal authority to judge whether an action purportedly taken for national security reasons is truly a national security action, is, as the WTO panel ruled, patently incorrect under international trade law. If the United States were correct about this, then why are specific circumstances set out in the WTO treaty that spell out when measures that would otherwise be inconsistent with WTO obligations can be excused for national security reasons? The United States agreed to the limits set out in the exception in 1947, and these limits have been in the trade rules—to which the United States agreed—ever since. Twice in recent years WTO panels have affirmed these limits when the national security exception has been invoked. As I have explained and explored at length in a new Cato Institute policy analysis, acceptance by WTO jurists of the contemporary and bipartisan U.S. view that the WTO has no jurisdiction on such matters would open up a black hole of national security, in which professed national security measures of all kinds could swallow up the entirety of all WTO obligations—something the United States itself warned against when the national security exception was written at the creation of the multilateral trading system in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.