Agricultural Trade Disputes Under The WTO Agreement Frameworks And Its Settlement Mechanism

Trade disputes, especially agricultural trade disputes are not harmonious with trade liberalization. Among the disputes treated by Dispute Settlement Body(DSB), agricultural trade disputes counted for 40%. This percentage is much bigger than that of agricultural trade. As a result, it is meaningful to study the agricultural trade disputes under the WTO agreement frameworks and its settlement mechanism for the prevention and settlement of agricultural trade disputes.Firstly, agricultural trade dispute cases from January, 1995 to September, 2005 are collected. There are dispute fact and index result.Secondly, analyze the products and members of agricultural trade disputes. Certain products and members are often involved in agricultural trade disputes.Thirdly, the methods of both qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis are used to study the main factors to the happening of agricultural trade disputes. A index system is set up and the factor analysis is used. The countries with high level of economy and low percentage of agriculture usually refer to more agricultural trade disputes. Besides, the members whose products on disputes are competitive often refer to more disputes.Then, Hormone dispute between US and European Union is selected for case study. The deficiency of WTO agreement and dispute settlement mechanism is one of the factors to the happening of agricultural trade disputes. Besides, comparative analysis method is used to compare the WTO and GATT, WTO and other international trade dispute settlement mechanism. WTO dispute settlement mechanism has its advantage, but it still has some disadvantage.Finally, the author gives some suggestions for China, including: when establishing quarantine and technology standard, we should make it close to the international standard, and sometimes, we need to consider our country's own condition; guard the anti-dumping and safeguard disputes; when making decisions, take other members' reaction into consideration to prevent the circumstances that are bad to both sides; make use of WTO agreements and dispute settlement mechanism to protect our trade benefit.