Quote:
Originally Posted by gideongallery
it is far worse than ignoring the spirit of the treaty but the letter of the law
the ajudication provision is defined to setup a third party court system to handle trade disputes amoung members. The US basically said we don't like the ruling we agreed to abide by so we are taking our ball and going home.
Well WTO is saying if you don't want to live up to your responsibilities then we are taking away all the benefits (berne convention).
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Sure.. it's exactly that GG.
Have followed this dispute for years - after initial hearings at the start and highlighting the specific claims of abuse, the "perp" claimed they had since changed and were complying with the terms of the treaty. Unfortunately, this was totally untrue and Antigua, Canada, the UK and several other countries then again pushed the issue in front of the WTO. A further ruling was made against the US and time was given to perform, and again - this never happened. Then the process was repeated - yet again *lol.
Basically it has been a series of hearings, rulings, reasonable time periods allowed to comply with the treaty/convention and this has ultimately failed. There are no rational "excuses" left to present to the WTO to justify the prohibition of trade "because we don't like it". The Berne Convention never was a pick-and-choose-the-good-bits scenario
Sure, there are ultimate consequences of playing your own ball-game and ignoring ratified treaties and no reason to expect the international community to jump up and defend US interests if the US can't even abide by the treaty itself.
It's like appearing before a judge and claiming you don't like the law you agreed to, so we'll just ignore it and continue our criminal ways
