KluwerLawOnline.com - Journal of World Trade

Reassessing Saudi Arabia’s Compliance With WTO Law: Accession Commitments, Dispute Participation, and Implementation

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:01:05 GMT

Saudi Arabia’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2005 followed one of the most extensive negotiation processes for a recently acceded member, resulting in a wide range of WTO-plus commitments set out in the Protocol of Accession (WT/L/627) and the Working Party Report (WT/ACC/SAU/61). This article provides the first systematic, doctrine-based assessment of the Kingdom’s behaviour within the confines of WTO law since joining the multilateral trading system. It examines the full spectrum of accession obligations – including trading rights, transparency requirements, Trade-Related Investment Measures elimination, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS)/technical barriers to trade (TBT) procedures, services commitments, and disciplines governing state-owned enterprises (SOEs) – and evaluates how these obligations have been internalized in practice. The analysis further reviews Saudi Arabia’s participation in WTO dispute settlement as complainant, respondent, and third party, with particular attention to DS567 as the primary instance involving an accession-related violation. The implementation record is assessed against the standards set out in Dispute Settlement Understanding Articles 21 and 22, together with evidence from Trade Policy Reviews (TPRs). Applying benchmarks derived from non-discrimination, transparency, exceptions jurisprudence, and implementation discipline, the article finds that Saudi Arabia has generally maintained a stable compliance profile, with notable strengths in tariff observance, publication of measures, and administrative modernization, alongside areas requiring continued scrutiny such as SOE transparency and certain localization practices. The study contributes to an underdeveloped literature by offering a strictly WTO-focused evaluation anchored exclusively in primary multilateral legal sources.

Volume 60 Online ISSN 1011-6702

Territoriality in International Trade Law: From Existential Entity to Functional Tool?

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:01:05 GMT

This article examines how the concept of ‘territory’ functions in World Trade Organization (WTO) law and how the law’s posture toward extraterritoriality is shifting as states adopt trade measures with global policy ambitions, particularly in climate and environmental regulation. It shows how domestic rules are designed to shape conduct abroad while maintaining a territorial façade. Mapping every use of ‘territory’ and ‘jurisdiction’ across WTO agreements, the article finds the texts territorial by default, deploying ‘jurisdiction’ only where territorial containment fails. Territory thus operates both as an existential status, the predicate of membership, and as a functional tool that organizes trade rules. Normatively, the article distinguishes territoriality (authority tied to space), functionality (vertical delegation to issue-specific regimes), and extraterritoriality (horizontal reach into other states’ domains). Many contemporary unilateral measures blend the three, with functionality often serving as the legal design through which extraterritoriality is delivered. The article concludes by proposing a ‘territorial-functional synthesis’. Measures should remain territorially anchored, answer a genuine cross-border need, and be filtered for extraterritoriality through WTO law’s existing discipline of non-discrimination.

Volume 60 Online ISSN 1011-6702

A Ray of Light of Plurilateral Cooperation: The Updated Annex K on Rules of Origin of the Revised Kyoto Convention

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:01:05 GMT

The thirty-sixth Revised Kyoto Convention Management Committee (RKC/MC) meeting, held at the World Customs Organization (WCO) in April 2026 marked a watershed by officially adopting the proposed comprehensive amendments to Specific Annex K on Rules of Origin.

This proposal was the result of a process started in 2018 by a sizeable group of sponsoring countries, an international organization, and private sector representatives (The Sponsoring Group of the proposal for Annex K on rules of origin during the ongoing comprehensive review of the Revised Kyoto Convention includes Australia, China, European Union, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Eurasian Economic Community, Renault Nissan, Fonterra as of December 2025.) (hereinafter the Sponsoring group) for an updated Annex K on rules of origin of the RKC. While final implementation is still pending in accordance with RKC procedures, the Sponsoring group has nonetheless been able to agree on a plurilateral text on rules of origin – a remarkable achievement.

The absence of multilateral disciplines on rules of origin – the plumbing of international trade in goods – exacerbates compliance costs in trade transactions that are not only continuing but are increasing exponentially in a fractured world trade.

The updated Annex K text provides leverage to resume plurilateral cooperation to enhance transparency and predictability in an area where consensus has proven impossible for decades within both the WCO and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

WCO and WTO secretariats, as well as their respective Members, should reflect on the model, dialogue, and mechanisms adopted by the Sponsoring group to reach consensus on the updated text of Annex K on rules of origin. This experience may offer valuable lessons on how to improve their intergovernmental decision-making machinery.

This article outlines the content of, and the process leading to consensus on the updated Annex K on rules of origin. It further recommends ways and means to leverage this advance in international cooperation as a building block towards the establishment of a plurilateral agreement governing rules of origin and pursue further cooperation in developing guidelines in implementing the updated Annex K.

Volume 60 Online ISSN 1011-6702

Managed Legal Incompatibility in EU: China Trade: Labour Conditionality

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:01:05 GMT

For decades, international trade law was premised on the expectation of regulatory convergence. However, the shifting dynamics of European Union (EU)–China relations reveal a contrasting reality: the strategic instrumentalization of domestic legal orders to construct new regulatory barriers to trade. This article introduces the concept of ‘Managed Legal Incompatibility’ to analyse this shift. By examining the structural asymmetry between the EU’s rights-based constitutionalism – manifested in the new Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and the Forced Labour Regulation – and China’s production-oriented, state-centric legal order, it argues that trade is no longer about managing openness, but about to conditional inclusion. The article demonstrates how the collision of these systems generates a ‘compliance paradox’ for firms, necessitating the bifurcation of supply chains and marking a transition from liberal market integration to functionally re-bordered exchange.

Volume 60 Online ISSN 1011-6702

AI in Mediation: Legal Effects and Trade Governance

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:01:05 GMT

This article examines artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted international commercial mediation through the interface between the EU AI Act and the Singapore Convention on Mediation. It argues that AI systems may be classified as high-risk where they go beyond administrative support and contribute to outcomes capable of producing legal effects through enforceability. Focusing on structural influence, deployer responsibilities, human oversight, transparency, data governance, and ‘shadow AI’, the article shows how failures in AI governance may affect enforceability under the Singapore Convention. It concludes that legitimate AI-assisted mediation requires dual legitimacy: ex-ante governance under the EU AI Act and ex-post scrutiny under the Singapore Convention.

Volume 60 Online ISSN 1011-6702

The EU’s ‘Composite’ GATT Article XX Defence in the Palm Oil Disputes at the WTO

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:01:05 GMT

In its palm oil disputes with Indonesia and Malaysia at the WTO, the EU proposed a novel approach to invoking three exceptions in framing an affirmative legal defence under Article XX of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The EU explained that it was raising subparagraphs (a), (b), and (g) as a ‘composite whole’. While respondents have relied on multiple GATT XX items before, the EU’s insistence that these items were non-separable represented a departure from established WTO practice. We argue that the EU’s composite defence was both analytically unsound and legally consequential. Drawing on how composite variables are used in empirical research, we submit that the EU’s defence was not intended to clarify the relationship among multiple regulatory objectives, but to obscure it. The main payoff was to prevent the complainants from proposing less trade-restrictive alternatives, which would increase the likelihood that its GATT XX defence would be provisionally justified and almost entirely obviate the function of the chapeau. If accepted by future WTO panels, this framing would risk Article XX’s two-tier test, and upend the careful balance sought between regulatory autonomy and trade discipline.

Volume 60 Online ISSN 1011-6702

Ups and Downs of the Variety of MFN: What’s Next?

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:01:05 GMT

We all know that the Most-Favoured-Nation (MFN) is the cornerstone of international economic governance, especially trade governance. Yet, policymakers and scholars of late have paid relatively little attention to its variety and evolution. Since MFN is not only a fundamental principle but also a key device to spur economic liberalization in an equitable manner, we should renew our interest in it. With the five types of MFN in mind (multilateral, regional, bilateral [third-party], non-party [automatic], and unilateral), this paper will first examine the historical ups and downs of economic liberalization spurred by the MFN. Then, from a theoretical standpoint, we will discuss the ‘backlash allowance’ or institutional flexibility of MFN, which we should properly take advantage of, but not abuse. The paper will finally consider which type of MFN is likely to be the key device for the governance of the complex international economy in the future.

Volume 60 Online ISSN 1011-6702