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Global Trade Under World Trade Organisation
Previous Year Question Paper with Solution
LLM · Group 2 Business Law
2016 Examination
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LLM Group 2 Business Law Global Trade Under World Trade Organisation 2016 Question Paper with Solutions
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First published on munotes.in on 12 August 2026.
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Model answers written and edited by the munotes.in editorial desk.
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The University does not publish an official answer key for this paper. The answers in this volume are model answers, written to show how a full-mark answer is built. They are a study aid, not an authority on what an examiner marked.
The question paper reproduced here is the paper as set by the University of Mumbai at the 2016 examination.
The answers in this volume state the law as it stands today, not as it stood when each paper was set, and four changes bear on answers throughout this folder. The Appellate Body has had no members since 30 November 2020, having lost its quorum on 11 December 2019, so a losing party can appeal into a void and prevent adoption; India did exactly that on 11 January 2022 in the sugar and sugarcane disputes and on 8 December 2023 in the information technology tariff dispute. The Fourteenth Ministerial Conference at Yaounde, 26 to 30 March 2026, closed without a declaration, and the moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions expired on 31 March 2026, for the first time since 1998. The Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies entered into force on 15 September 2025. And TRIPS Article 31bis, in force 23 January 2017, remains the only amendment ever made to a WTO agreement. Where an answer turns on any of these it gives the date.
Contents
The questions below are the paper as the University of Mumbai set it at the 2016 examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2016 examination, reproduced as the University of Mumbai set them, in the order it set them. Nothing has been reworded, added or left out. Only the answers are ours. See the original question paper.
Duration 3 hours · Total marks 100 · 7 questions answered
How to use this volume
Solve the paper first, under exam conditions and against the clock. Then read the answers here and mark your own. Reading a solution before attempting the question feels productive and teaches very little, because recognising an answer is not the same as being able to write one.
SECTION I
Q.P. Code 308401
any four of seven, all carrying equal marks of 25 · 100 Marks
1)Explain the composition and functions of WTO and examine its role in promoting Global Trade[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: composition from Article IV, functions from Article III, and then the third clause of the stem, which is the one that carries the marks: examine the role, with evidence on both sides, because "examine" is not "describe".
Composition
The WTO is composed of its members and of the bodies they constitute. Article XI makes the contracting parties to GATT 1947 who accepted the Agreement and the schedules original members; Article XII provides for accession by any state or separate customs territory possessing full autonomy in its external commercial relations, on terms agreed with the WTO, by a two thirds decision of the Ministerial Conference. There are one hundred and sixty six members as of 2026, Timor-Leste and Comoros having acceded at the Thirteenth Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi in February 2024.
Article VIII confers legal personality and the necessary privileges and immunities. Article IX:1 provides for decision by consensus, with a vote only if consensus cannot be reached; Article IX:2 gives the Ministerial Conference and General Council exclusive authority to adopt interpretations, by three fourths; Article IX:3 permits waivers by three fourths; Article X governs amendment, with the most favoured nation provisions of Article I of GATT, Article II:1 of GATS and Article 4 of TRIPS amendable only with the acceptance of all members.
The bodies, tier by tier. The Ministerial Conference of all members, meeting at least every two years, competent on all matters. The General Council of all members, discharging its functions between sessions and convening also as the Dispute Settlement Body under Article IV:3 and as the Trade Policy Review Body under Article IV:4. Three sectoral Councils under Article IV:5, for Trade in Goods, Trade in Services and TRIPS, with subsidiary committees under Article IV:6.
Committees reporting directly to the General Council under Article IV:7 on Trade and Development, Balance of Payments Restrictions and Budget, Finance and Administration, with Trade and Environment and Regional Trade Agreements added later. Two plurilateral committees under Annex 4, on Government Procurement and Civil Aircraft, binding only their parties. And a Secretariat under Article VI of about six hundred and thirty staff headed by a Director General, whose responsibilities are exclusively international and who take instructions from no government, and who decide nothing: the organisation is member driven and every decision is a members' decision.
Functions
Article III lists five. To facilitate the implementation, administration and operation of the covered agreements and to further their objectives, and to provide the framework for the plurilaterals. To provide the forum for negotiations. To administer the Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes. To administer the Trade Policy Review Mechanism. And to cooperate with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank with a view to achieving greater coherence in global economic policymaking.
Two of the five deserve expansion because they are what the organisation actually does most days. Dispute settlement has handled more than six hundred and thirty disputes since 1995, against roughly three hundred in GATT's entire forty seven years. The Trade Policy Review Mechanism in Annex 3 subjects every member's whole trade regime to periodic collective examination on the basis of two reports, one by the government and one by the Secretariat, at intervals graduated by share of world trade, the four largest traders every three years and others less often. It creates no obligations and imposes no remedies; its value is publicity and internal discipline, since a government must explain its own protection to itself before it explains it in Geneva.
Examining the role in promoting global trade: the case for
The tariff and predictability record is very strong. Average bound industrial tariffs in developed members are under four per cent after the Uruguay Round commitments, from about forty per cent in 1947, and the great majority of world tariff lines are now bound, which converts protection from a discretionary act into a legal commitment. World merchandise trade grew from about five trillion dollars in 1995 to well over twenty trillion by the mid 2020s, and commercial services trade from about one to more than seven trillion.
Accession is the strongest evidence, because it is voluntary. Thirty six governments have acceded since 1995, including China on 11 December 2001, whose accession Protocol imposed obligations far beyond the standard package, Vietnam in 2007, Saudi Arabia in 2005, Russia in 2012 and Timor-Leste and Comoros in 2024. A government does not undertake decades of legislative reform to join a body it believes irrelevant.
Rule bound dispute settlement replaced retaliation, and that is the deepest contribution. Negative consensus made panel establishment, report adoption and authorisation of retaliation automatic, and Article 23.1 requires members to use the system rather than act unilaterally, a discipline applied to American trade legislation in United States: Sections 301 to 310 of the Trade Act of 1974, WT/DS152/R, adopted 27 January 2000. Small members have won against large ones: Antigua and Barbuda against the United States in United States: Gambling, Costa Rica against the United States in United States: Underwear, and India against the European Communities in European Communities: Tariff Preferences, WT/DS246/AB/R, adopted 20 April 2004.
Specific institutional achievements should be named. The phase out of the Multi Fibre Arrangement quotas by 1 January 2005 under the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing. The first discipline on agriculture in the system's history. The Trade Facilitation Agreement, agreed at Bali in December 2013 and in force 22 February 2017, the first multilateral agreement concluded under the WTO, on customs procedures, with implementation sequenced to each developing member's own notified capacity. The Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, adopted in June 2022 and in force 15 September 2025 on acceptance by two thirds of the membership, the first WTO agreement with environmental sustainability at its core. And the elimination of agricultural export subsidies by the Nairobi Ministerial Decision of 19 December 2015.
Examining the role: the case against
The negotiating function has substantially failed. The Doha Development Agenda, launched in November 2001, has never been concluded. Cancun in 2003 collapsed over the Singapore issues and cotton; the July 2008 package collapsed over the special safeguard mechanism, with India and China on one side and the United States on the other; and since Nairobi in 2015 members have not agreed even that the Doha mandate survives. Of the WTO's five functions, the second has produced two multilateral agreements in thirty years.
The judicial function has now failed too. The Appellate Body lost its quorum on 11 December 2019 and its last member's term expired on 30 November 2020, because appointments require a consensus one member has withheld since 2017. A losing party can appeal into a void and prevent adoption indefinitely; India has done so twice, in the sugar disputes on 11 January 2022 and in the information technology tariff dispute on 8 December 2023. The MC12 commitment of 17 June 2022 to restore a functioning system by 2024 was missed.
The Fourteenth Ministerial Conference is the clearest single piece of evidence. Held at Yaoundé, Cameroon, from 26 to 30 March 2026, it closed without a ministerial declaration; the moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions, renewed at every conference since 1998, expired on 31 March 2026; and sixty six members endorsed an E-Commerce Agreement outside the multilateral framework. The pattern of the last decade is the migration of rule making to plurilateral arrangements and to regional agreements, of which over three hundred and fifty are in force and notified, so that a large and growing share of world trade moves on preferential rather than most favoured nation terms.
The development criticism is separate and it is India's. The Uruguay Round bargain gave developing members TRIPS and GATS obligations from 1995 and back loaded their textile gains to 2005; special and differential treatment provisions are mostly hortatory; implementation issues raised in 2001 are unresolved; the public stockholding question, protected only by the Bali peace clause of 7 December 2013 and the General Council decision of 27 November 2014, still has no permanent solution and was again unresolved at Yaoundé; and only one dispute in thirty years has ever been brought by a least developed member.
Accession, which is the strongest single piece of evidence about the role
Thirty six governments have acceded since 1995 under Article XII, and the terms tell the story better than any trade statistic. Accession is not a formality: the applicant negotiates a working party report, a goods schedule and a services schedule with every interested member, and the accumulated commitments frequently go well beyond the standard package.
China's accession on 11 December 2001 is the clearest case. Its Protocol contained obligations no founding member bears: a special transitional review mechanism, a textile specific safeguard in paragraph 242 available until 31 December 2008, the transitional product specific safeguard in section 16 available for twelve years, extensive commitments on trading rights and distribution, and the price comparability methodology in section 15, which permitted other members to use a non market economy method in anti-dumping investigations. China accepted those terms, undertook a very large programme of legislative reform to satisfy them, and did so because access to the system on any terms was worth more than staying outside.
The pattern repeats at every scale. Vietnam acceded in 2007, Saudi Arabia in 2005, Russia in 2012 after eighteen years of negotiation, and Timor-Leste and Comoros at Abu Dhabi in February 2024. Around twenty two governments remain in accession, and none has withdrawn its application on the ground that membership is not worth having.
And the negative test is equally telling. Article XV of the Marrakesh Agreement permits withdrawal on six months' notice, and no member has ever exercised it. For an organisation frequently described as failing, thirty six voluntary entries at heavy legislative cost and zero exits is a fact any assessment has to accommodate. It does not answer the criticism that the WTO can no longer make rules; it does establish that the rules it already administers are valued by the governments bound by them.
Conclusion. The WTO is composed of one hundred and sixty six members and of the bodies they staff themselves, from the Ministerial Conference through a General Council that is simultaneously the Dispute Settlement Body and the Trade Policy Review Body, to three sectoral Councils and their committees, served by a Secretariat with no power to decide. Its functions under Article III are administration, negotiation, dispute settlement, trade policy review and cooperation with the Bretton Woods institutions.
Examined honestly, its role in promoting global trade divides in two: as an administrator and adjudicator it has been the most effective economic institution of the post war order, binding tariffs at historically low levels, attracting thirty six accessions including China's, replacing retaliation with adjudication and delivering the Trade Facilitation and Fisheries Subsidies Agreements; as a legislature it has produced almost nothing since 1995, and since December 2019 its appellate tier has been empty and, at Yaoundé in March 2026, even its oldest standing moratorium lapsed. The organisation still governs world trade; it has largely stopped being able to change the rules by which it does so.
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