IV 
108TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION 
H. CON. RES. 243
Expressing the sense of the Congress regarding dispute settlement proceedings 
in the World Trade Organization. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
JULY 15, 2003
Mr. LEVIN submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred 
to the Committee on Ways and Means 
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 
Expressing the sense of the Congress regarding dispute 
settlement proceedings in the World Trade Organization.
Whereas the ability of the United States to apply its unfair 
trade and trade remedy laws has for more than half a 
century been a cornerstone of the support of the United 
States for the multilateral trading system, the General 
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and, since 1995, the 
World Trade Organization (in this preamble referred to 
as the ‘‘WTO’’); 
Whereas remedies for unfair trade have been a fundamental 
part of rights under the General Agreement on Tariffs 
and Trade since 1947; Article VI of the GATT 1994 (as 
defined in section 2 of the Uruguay Round Agreements 
Act (19 U.S.C. 3501)) authorizes the imposition of duties 
in response to the unfair international trading practice of
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injurious dumping and expressly ‘‘condemns’’ this prac-
tice; 
Whereas to this day, injurious dumping is the only trading 
practice that is specifically condemned by the GATT; 
Whereas Article VI also expressly authorizes the imposition 
of duties to respond to subsidized imports that cause in-
jury to a United States industry; 
Whereas Article XIX of the GATT 1994 authorizes WTO 
member countries to apply safeguard measures when 
products are being imported in such increased quantities 
and under such conditions as to cause or threaten serious 
injury to a domestic industry; 
Whereas during the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade ne-
gotiations that concluded in 1994, the United States and 
other countries negotiated detailed agreements that effec-
tuate and implement these foundation provisions of the 
GATT 1994; 
Whereas the clear and appropriate limits to the review by the 
WTO of the laws, regulations, administrative decisions, 
and other actions of the United States were an essential 
condition of the approval by the Congress of legislation 
implementing the Uruguay Round Agreements; 
Whereas Articles 3.2 and 19.2 of the Understanding on Rules 
and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes (in 
this preamble referred to as the ‘‘Dispute Settlement Un-
derstanding’’) expressly provide that the Dispute Settle-
ment Body, dispute settlement panels, and the Appellate 
Body of the WTO ‘‘cannot add to or diminish the rights 
and obligations’’ provided in the Agreement on Imple-
mentation of Article VI of the General Agreement on 
Tariffs and Trade 1994 (in this preamble referred to as
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the ‘‘Antidumping Agreement’’), the Agreement on Sub-
sidies and Countervailing Measures, the Agreement on 
Safeguards, or any of the other Uruguay Round Agree-
ments referred to in section 101(d) of the Uruguay 
Round Agreements Act; 
Whereas notwithstanding those provisions and in direct con-
travention of them, dispute settlement panels, the Appel-
late Body, and the Dispute Settlement Body of the WTO 
have repeatedly diminished the rights of the United 
States to apply unfair trade laws and trade remedy laws 
by imposing new obligations on the United States in the 
application of those laws; 
Whereas with regard to unfair trade laws and trade remedies, 
the President’s Statement of Administrative Action (in 
this preamble referred to as the ‘‘SAA’’) accompanying 
the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (H.R. Doc. No. 316, 
Vol. 1, 103d Cong., 2d Sess. (1994)) states clearly that 
explicit limits in the Dispute Settlement Understanding 
and the standard of review established at Article 17.6 of 
the Antidumping Agreement are expressly designed to es-
tablish clear parameters for dispute settlement panels 
and the Appellate Body in reviewing decisions of the 
United States Department of Commerce and the United 
States International Trade Commission in antidumping 
and countervailing duty cases; 
Whereas the SAA states that ‘‘Article 17.6 [of the Anti-
dumping Agreement] contains a special standard of re-
view, which is analogous to the deferential standard ap-
plied by U.S. courts in reviewing actions by the U.S. De-
partment of Commerce and the U.S. International Trade 
Commission’’; 
Whereas that standard of review provides that—
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(1) a dispute settlement panel may not reevaluate 
the factual findings of the national authorities if the na-
tional authorities’ determination was objective and unbi-
ased, even though the panel might have reached a dif-
ferent conclusion; and 
(2) where the language of the Antidumping Agree-
ment may be interpreted in more than one way, a dispute 
settlement panel must confirm a determination by na-
tional authorities that conforms to one of the permissible 
interpretations of the Antidumping Agreement;
Whereas the SAA further states that—
(1) ‘‘Article 17.6 ensures that WTO panels will not 
second-guess the factual conclusions of the agencies, even 
in situations where the panel might have reached a con-
clusion different from that of the agency. In addition, ar-
ticle 17.6 ensures that panels will not be able to rewrite, 
under the guise of legal interpretation, the provisions of 
the Agreement, many of which were deliberately drafted 
to accommodate a variety of methodologies’’; and 
(2) ‘‘A Ministerial Declaration accompanying the 
Uruguay Round Agreements provides for the ‘consistent 
resolution’ of disputes arising from the imposition of 
antidumping and countervailing duty measures through 
the application of the article 17.6 standard of review to 
both types of disputes’’;
Whereas dispute settlement panels and the Appellate Body of 
the WTO have undermined the rights of the United 
States and imposed new obligations on the United 
States—
(1) by failing repeatedly to follow the clearly stated 
obligation in Article 17.6(i) of the Antidumping Agree-
ment to find that an antidumping measure is inconsistent
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(8) by imposing an evidentiary standard with regard 
to pricing of government provision of goods and services 
that is inconsistent with the Uruguay Round Agreements 
by prohibiting in all cases the use of evidence of prices 
from comparable external sales, properly adjusted to re-
flect the home market conditions, even when a home mar-
ket is shown to be nonexistent or heavily distorted by the 
government subsidy;
(9) by attempting to impose a narrow definition of 
an indirect subsidy that does not reflect any legal obliga-
tion under the Agreement on Subsidies and Counter-
vailing Measures, by insisting that a government must 
explicitly order a private party to subsidize (without any 
other option) rather than simply to ‘‘entrust or direct’’ 
the private party to subsidize; 
(10) by deciding cases prematurely when the United 
States has taken no action that violates the substantive 
provisions of the Uruguay Round Agreements; 
(11) by imposing new obligations on the ways in 
which the United States may spend its revenues, obliga-
tions the United States never agreed to accept and which 
Congress never would have accepted, and setting a dan-
gerous precedent of and interference by the WTO into 
the spending decisions of the United States Government; 
(12) by creating a requirement that a showing of 
‘‘unforeseen developments’’ is a prerequisite for imposing 
a safeguard measure; 
(13) by creating a ‘‘parallelism’’ requirement requir-
ing a WTO member to make additional findings and con-
clusions before it can exercise its right under a free trade 
agreement to exclude from a safeguard measure imports 
from other members of the free trade agreement; and
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(14) by creating restrictions on the form and level 
of safeguard measures that may be imposed; 
(15) by repeatedly conducting de novo reviews of the 
decisions of WTO members in antidumping, counter-
vailing duty, and safeguards cases by considering addi-
tional facts and interpretations of facts never presented 
before the decisionmaking authorities of WTO members; 
(16) by indicating in another WTO member’s case 
that the practice of zeroing negative product-specific anti-
dumping margins in the course of calculating a weighted-
average antidumping margin across all product categories 
violates the Antidumping Agreement;
Whereas these new obligations created by dispute settlement 
panels and the Appellate Body were not agreed to by the 
United States or by any other country and are not re-
flected in the text, negotiating history, or interpretative 
history of the pertinent agreement; 
Whereas these new obligations created by dispute settlement 
panels and the Appellate Body often reflect changes that 
WTO members sought but which were not agreed to and 
in many instances are inconsistent with prior GATT deci-
sions; 
Whereas these actions and decisions by dispute settlement 
panels and the Appellate Body are causing a serious ero-
sion to the respect for the rule of law within the WTO 
and substantially diminish confidence in the WTO, and, 
if left uncorrected, will in turn lead to a serious erosion 
of support for trade liberalization under the WTO; 
Whereas the problem of dispute settlement panels and the 
Appellate Body acting to undermine the rights of the 
United States and to create new obligations is not limited 
to decisions involving the Antidumping Agreement, the
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Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, 
and the Agreement on Safeguards; 
Whereas in a number of other contexts, dispute settlement 
panels and the Appellate Body have, without justification, 
injected new obligations that fill gaps deliberately left 
open or unclear by negotiators; 
Whereas on occasion, dispute settlement panels and the Ap-
pellate Body have purported to inject new obligations os-
tensibly to reflect principles of substantive public inter-
national law; 
Whereas whatever the reason or motivation, these actions by 
dispute settlement panels and the Appellate Body to cre-
ate new rights and obligations under the WTO are ex-
pressly prohibited by the Dispute Settlement Under-
standing and the terms of other Uruguay Round Agree-
ments; 
Whereas the United States, together with other WTO mem-
bers, should take immediate actions to correct these seri-
ous misapplications of the rules of the WTO as agreed 
to by the United States and other WTO members and 
ensure that no additional misapplication of such rules oc-
curs by dispute settlement panels or the Appellate Body 
in the future; and 
Whereas only these immediate actions can begin to restore a 
high level of confidence in WTO decisions: Now, there-
fore, be it
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate 
concurring), That it is the sense of the Congress that the 
President should—
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(1) ensure that in any proceeding under the 
World Trade Organization (in this resolution re-
ferred to as the ‘‘WTO’’) involving the unfair trade 
and trade remedy laws of the United States, the 
members of the WTO dispute settlement panel in 
that proceeding—
(A) have expertise administering the unfair 
trade and trade remedy law at issue in the pro-
ceeding and are currently administrators, or re-
tired administrators, of unfair trade or trade 
remedy laws in a WTO member country; and 
(B) have expertise in the provisions of the 
Uruguay Round Agreement (as defined in sec-
tion 2 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act) 
that is applicable to the unfair trade or trade 
remedy law at issue in the proceeding; 
(2) with respect to the Appellate Body of the 
WTO, ensure that 2 or more members of the Appel-
late Body panel hearing a case have expertise in ad-
ministering unfair trade or trade remedy laws;
(3) ensure that the members of dispute settle-
ment panels and the Appellate Body referred to in 
paragraphs (1) and (2)—
(A) understand commonly applied and 
commonly accepted principles of administrative
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law, including that tribunals, panels, courts, 
and other adjudicatory bodies typically apply an 
appropriate standard of deference to an expert 
decisionmaker with regard to issues of fact and 
law; 
(B) expressly understand and accept the 
central importance of Article 17.6 of the Agree-
ment on Implementation of Article VI of the 
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 
(in this resolution referred to as the ‘‘Anti-
dumping Agreement’’) to the successful comple-
tion of the Antidumping Agreement, the Uru-
guay Round negotiations as a whole, and to the 
proper and successful interpretation and appli-
cation of the Antidumping Agreement; 
(C) apply the principles embodied in Arti-
cle 17.6 of the Antidumping Agreement to the 
Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing 
Measures in order to effectuate ‘‘the consistent 
resolution of disputes arising from anti-dump-
ing and countervailing duty measures’’, in par-
ticular in compliance with the WTO Declaration 
on Dispute Settlement Pursuant to the Agree-
ment on Implementation of Article VI of the 
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994
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or Part V of the Agreement on Subsidies and 
Countervailing Measures; and 
(D) apply the principles embodied in Arti-
cle 17.6 of the Antidumping Agreement to the 
Agreement on Safeguards in order to effectuate 
the consistent resolution of disputes arising 
from trade remedy measures; 
(4) reaffirm, in ongoing negotiations under the 
auspices of the WTO, the importance of the correct 
application of Article 17.6 of the Antidumping 
Agreement and the need for dispute settlement pan-
els and the Appellate Body of the WTO to follow 
that provision strictly in both antidumping and 
countervailing duty cases; and 
(5) reaffirm, in ongoing negotiations under the 
auspices of the WTO, the importance of allowing 
private parties who have an interest in, and are sup-
portive of, the United States position in inter-
national disputes, to observe, have access to, and 
participate in WTO proceedings, to the maximum 
extent permissible under current WTO rules and 
practices.
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