LLM Group 2 Business Law Global Trade Under World Trade Organisation 2019 Question Paper with Solutions

For full marks, cover: three things, in the order the stem gives them. Composition means the membership and the organs. Framework means the legal architecture, that is Article II and the Annexes and the single undertaking. And the key subjects covered is the third clause and is the one most candidates neglect, so it deserves the largest share: it means a subject by subject account of what the covered agreements actually regulate.

The organs, under Article IV. The Ministerial Conference of all members, meeting at least every two years, competent to decide on all matters under any multilateral agreement; fourteen sessions from Singapore in 1996 to Yaoundé, Cameroon, from 26 to 30 March 2026. The General Council of all members, discharging the Conference's 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, so that three boxes on the organisation chart are the same members in the same room on different days. 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 by later decision. Two plurilateral committees under Annex 4. And a Secretariat under Article VI of about six hundred and thirty staff headed by a Director General, whose responsibilities are exclusively international, who take instructions from no government, and who decide nothing: every decision is a members' decision, normally by consensus under Article IX:1.

Two further framework rules. Article XVI:3 gives the Marrakesh Agreement precedence over the Annex 1 agreements in case of conflict, and the General Interpretative Note to Annex 1A gives a specific goods agreement precedence over GATT 1994. Article IX provides for consensus, with interpretations and waivers by three fourths, and Article X for 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 every member.

The key subjects covered, subject by subject

Trade in goods: market access. GATT 1994 Articles II and XXVIII on bound tariffs and their modification, Article XI on the prohibition of quotas, and the Agreement on Import Licensing Procedures. The subject is the terms on which a good may cross a frontier.

Trade in goods: non-discrimination. Articles I and III of GATT 1994, most favoured nation treatment and national treatment.

Agriculture. The Agreement on Agriculture, with tariffication under Article 4.2, the green, blue and amber boxes with a ten per cent de minimis for developing members under Article 6.4, and the export competition disciplines completed by the Nairobi Decision of 19 December 2015.

Textiles. The Agreement on Textiles and Clothing, which phased out the Multi Fibre Arrangement quotas in four stages and expired by its own terms on 1 January 2005.

Investment measures. The TRIMs Agreement, whose Article 2.1 and Illustrative List catch local content and trade balancing requirements, applied against India in India: Solar Cells, WT/DS456/AB/R, adopted 14 October 2016.

Trade in services. GATS, defining trade by four modes in Article I:2, with most favoured nation treatment in Article II and transparency in Article III binding all members, and market access under Article XVI and national treatment under Article XVII binding only where scheduled, plus annexes on financial services, telecommunications, air transport and movement of natural persons.

Intellectual property. TRIPS, setting minimum standards for copyright, trade marks, geographical indications, industrial designs, patents, layout designs, undisclosed information and licensing practices, requiring enforcement machinery in Articles 41 to 61 and applying the DSU by Article 64.

A closing observation on the framework as it now stands

The framework is under strain in three places and a current answer should say so. The Appellate Body created by Annex 2 has had no members since 30 November 2020, because appointments require an Article IX consensus withheld since 2017. The Doha Development Agenda launched in November 2001 has never concluded, and the membership has produced two multilateral agreements in thirty years. And at Yaoundé in March 2026 the Fourteenth Ministerial Conference closed without a ministerial declaration, the moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions expired on 31 March 2026 for the first time since 1998, and sixty six members endorsed an E-Commerce Agreement outside the multilateral framework, which is the return of the plurilateral the single undertaking was designed to prevent.

Second, and consequently, the joint statement initiatives, which sit outside the framework altogether. Because Annex 4 is closed by consensus, groups of members have concluded arrangements among themselves and then attempted to bring them into their own schedules rather than into the Agreement. The Reference Paper on Services Domestic Regulation, agreed in December 2021 by sixty seven participants and incorporated into their GATS schedules from early 2024, is the working model; the Investment Facilitation for Development agreement negotiated by a similar group has not been incorporated; and sixty six members endorsed an E-Commerce Agreement at Yaoundé in March 2026 outside the multilateral framework.

Why this matters to the framework question. Article II was drafted so that the scope of the organisation and the scope of its Annexes were the same thing, and the single undertaking was designed to end the fragmentation of the Tokyo Round codes. The growth of arrangements that bind some members and not others, without passing through Annex 4, is therefore a change in the framework itself rather than in its content. Whether those arrangements are lawfully within the WTO at all, and whether commitments taken under them may be scheduled without a consensus decision, is now the most consequential unsettled question about the institution's structure.

United States: Sections 301 to 310 of the Trade Act of 1974, WT/DS152/R, adopted 27 January 2000.* The facts. The American statute obliged the Trade Representative to determine whether a foreign practice was actionable and to act within deadlines that could expire before WTO proceedings finished. The holding. The panel found the deadlines prima facie inconsistent with Article 23.2(a) of the DSU, which reserves determinations of inconsistency to the multilateral procedure, but held the statute saved by the United States' formal undertakings about how the residual discretion would be exercised. The European Communities won on the law; the statute survived on the undertaking. Why it bears on the framework:** the single undertaking and the Annex 2 procedure are not merely internal arrangements between governments. They reach into a member's domestic legislation, and the largest trader in the system had to bind itself as to the use of its own trade statute.

And a point about the key subjects, made through the absence of a case. Of the subjects listed above, the ones with no case law at all are the ones the WTO never regulated: there is no dispute about competition policy, none about investment protection, and none about labour standards, because there is no covered agreement on any of them. The map of WTO case law is therefore also a map of the organisation's scope.