James Bacchus
Aresolution before Congress calls for US withdrawal from the World Trade Organization (WTO). Both international law and US law permit withdrawal. The case for withdrawal, however, is misguided and misinformed.
Much of what is said and widely believed about the effects of WTO membership on the United States is simply untrue. In fact, American membership in the WTO has been for decades and remains today enormously beneficial economically to US businesses,
workers, and consumers. Withdrawal by the United States from the WTO would result in the loss of many of these economic benefits, including those derived from decades of accumulated trade commitments made by the 165 other member countries on thousands of different US goods and services traded within the WTO legal framework; those resulting from the commercial shield of WTO rules forbidding trade discrimination against US exports; and those emanating from the availability to the United States of an impartial,
binding, and enforceable system of WTO trade dispute settlement. Moreover, withdrawal by the United States would cede US leadership in the WTO to other leading trading countries, including the second-largest trading country in the world, China. Trade is a win-win economically for all WTO members. WTO membership maximizes the overall economic gains from engaging in trade. The United States should remain in the WTO and help lead it toward needed reforms that will make it more beneficial to all in the modern global economy of the 21st century.
A resolution under consideration by the Congress of the United States proposes that the United States withdraw as one of the 166 member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the international institution based in Geneva, Switzerland, that oversees 98 percent of world commerce. Can this be done? Can the United States withdraw from the WTO? To answer, we must look at international law (specifically, at the WTO Agreement) and, domestically, at US law and the US Constitution.
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