National security and trade policy have frequently intersected, but over the past several years, conflict has grown. After decades of careful avoidance of invoking national security in disputes at the GATT/WTO, there has been a recent proliferation of these cases. And most controversially, the Trump administration has adopted an expansive interpretation of “national security” to justify imposing tariffs and quotas on steel and aluminum products (which it may soon apply to automobiles). Many US trading partners responded immediately with tariffs of their own, and both the US tariffs and the retaliatory tariffs are the subject of litigation that will test the limits of the WTO dispute settlement process and the trading system itself.
Simon Lester
Huan Zhu