disputes against at least six other WTO members (Brazil, Canada, China, India, Indonesia, and Philippines) with foreign investment regimes alleged to contain local content requirements.

More recently, the renewable energy sector - e.g., wind turbines and towers, solar panels - has also faced a number of WTO challenges to foreign direct investment regulations for their inclusion of local content requirements. The allegation is that such requirements artificially stimulate demand for locally-sourced inputs and upstream industries and thus discriminate against imported inputs. Examples from these sectors include regulations imposed by Canada, the EU, China, and India and disputes brought by Japan, China and the United States.<sup>103</sup>

# **5.2.2 Other demand policies: consumer safety, product labeling, and IPRs**

Table 11 presents our final examples of potentially trade-restricting demand-side policies, including product standards for consumer safety, consumer product labeling, trademarks, and other regulations related to intellectual property rights (IPRs) enforcement.

Consumer product safety standards are similar to the production standards described earlier, in that foreign exporters typically allege that the standard is either too restrictive, and not justified in light of scientific evidence and international standards, or it is being applied in a manner than discriminates against imports. Perhaps the highest-profile examples of such disputed policies are the EU’s ‘Frankenstein food’ regulations applied to hormone-treated beef and to food and agricultural products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The United States and other countries appealed to the lack of scientific evidence supporting EU attempts to justify these policies through the ‘precautionary principle,’ or that the long-term effects of such product characteristics on human, animal, and plant health, as well as the environment, were unknown. As indicated earlier, the WTO relies on Codex Alimentarius as the international organization in charge of establishing scientific standards for food safety; as such, its standards play an important benchmarking role against which to compare any country’s chosen level of domestic standards.

Table 11 indicates a number of other countries have also faced challenges to their public health policies on consumer safety standards. There have been WTO challenges to the US bans on clove cigarettes, Internet gambling, and Mexican commercial trucking services. Japan has also challenged Korea’s restrictions on imported agricultural products after the Fukushima nuclear incident.

Foreign exporters are increasingly challenging consumer product labels by alleging that the label increases demand for the domestic variety at the expense of foreign varieties. The consumer labels sometimes arise from a domestic legal requirement regarding a consumer’s ‘right to know,’ and often mandate that firms provide information about certain product attributes. Furthermore, the schemes can be mandatory or voluntary.

Failure to satisfy the mandatory labeling requirements means a product cannot be sold. Discrimination against foreign products could arise, for example, if it is more costly to label imported products. Table 11 documents how Mexico and Canada recently challenged a US country of origin

> 103Some of these disputes also concern the consumption subsidies and other BTB policies described earlier in the market for solar panels.

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