2. ‘The WTO is a stacked court’

	The accusation “The WTO's dispute panels, which rule on whether domestic laws are ‘barriers to trade’ [1] and should therefore be abolished, consist of three trade bureaucrats who are not screened for conflict of interests [2]. For example, in the tuna/dolphin case that Mexico filed against the US, which forced the US to repeal its law [3] that barred tuna from being caught by mile-long nets that kill hundreds of thousands of dolphins each year, one of the judges was from a corporate front group that lobbied on behalf of the Mexican government for NAFTA.”

The reality

The WTO's dispute settlement procedures were agreed by all member governments. They were not imposed on anyone.

1. Dispute panels rule on whether countries break agreements they have made with each other in the WTO — not on “whether domestic laws are barriers to trade”. Without these independent panels, countries could be tempted to settle trade conflict by force.

2. All three panelists are normally agreed by both sides in a dispute. In the minority of cases (15 out of almost 200 cases) when the two sides cannot agree, the WTO director-general selects the panelists.

3. The US was not required to repeal its law. Instead, Washington negotiated treaties with relevant trading partners.

[The tuna/dolphin case came under pre-1995 GATT procedures, not the post-1995 WTO dispute settlement process. The panel report was never adopted. The US and Mexico settled bilaterally “out of court”].

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