26. Trade · Notable · Contested — excluded from counts
Restore the WTO's dispute resolution process to full strength
Printed page 801 26. Trade · from “The Case for Free Trade”
“Restore the World Trade Organization’s dispute resolution process to full strength.”
What has happened
- Not started
The Appellate Body is empty and the United States is the reason. USTR's 2025 Annual Report, delivered to Congress on 2026-03-02, states that "the United States was not prepared to agree to launch the process to fill vacancies on the Appellate Body" and that "there were no persons serving on the Appellate Body as of December 31, 2025". The two reform papers the United States filed at the WTO — WT/GC/W/984 of 2025-12-15 and WT/GC/W/998 of 2026-03-23 — do not propose restoring the dispute settlement system: the December paper says the system "provided no help" and that the Appellate Body "inappropriately restricted Members' ability to counter non-market economic distortions", and the March paper's six sections are notifications, special and differential treatment, plurilaterals, most-favored-nation, the Secretariat and essential security, with its only dispute-settlement proposal being that adjudicators should not review a Member's invocation of the security exception. The 14th Ministerial Conference ended in impasse on 2026-03-30. In Congress, H.J. Res. 93, withdrawing approval of the Agreement Establishing the WTO, was placed on the Union Calendar on 2025-06-12.
- USTR, 2026 Trade Policy Agenda and 2025 Annual Report — no persons serving on the Appellate Body as of 2025-12-31; the United States would not agree to launch the process to fill vacancies
- United States, Report on WTO Reform (WT/GC/W/984) — the dispute settlement system "provided no help"; the Appellate Body "inappropriately restricted Members' ability"
- USTR: Press Release Regarding the WTO's 14th Ministerial Conference — MC14 ended in impasse
- H.J. Res. 93, Withdrawing approval of the Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization — placed on the Union Calendar 2025-06-12
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Contested Recommendation from “The Case for Free Trade”. This is one of the clearest places in the chapter where the record answers one Position by refusing the other: the same U.S. reform papers that make #2122 (attempted — end China’s developing-nation status) are the reason this ask is not started, because the reform agenda they set out deliberately omits restoring the dispute settlement system. Both items cite them; they support #2122 and cut against this one.
- Leveled under §3b’s “moved the other way carries its Evidence in the frontmatter”.
- The U.S. reform papers are WTO documents but were fetched from
ustr.gov, which is on the allowlist;wto.orgis not, and the Yaoundé ministerial package was not cited for that reason.
- Action
- restore
- Object
- World Trade Organization dispute resolution process
- ID
- 2103