Administered Protection in the GATT/WTO System

This paper examines how WTO member governments have used safeguards, antidumping, and other instruments of “administered” or “contingent” protection in the management of domestic pressures for protection. Three conclusions emerge from the examination:

• These provisions have been extensively used but at the same time have remained under discipline. Application of the restrictions they allow has been minimal relative to the liberalization the GATT/WTO system has supported.

• Reform-minded developing country governments have employed these rules skillfully to support their own liberalization programs.

• Antidumping is perhaps the classic example of a pragmatically successful flexibility instrument with pretensions – but no more than pretensions – to a real economic rational.