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The World Trade Organization aims at encouraging further liberalization at the multilateral level and remedy the economic prospects given by other regional trade (such as for example, the Transpacific Partnership) and at elaborating a legal framework for its members. Especially concerning this second goal, since the members have been growing, the need for proper legal tools is even more urgent. Chapter 9 deals with the identification of the risks involved in expecting reform to produce results coincident with Members’ interests or objectives. Two main areas of WTO law are investigated in detail by the author: firstly the creation of the new dispute settlement system and secondly the interpretation of Article 17.6, which deals with the Anti-Dumping Agreement (ADA). The concept of dumping is of extreme interest: dumping refers to a situation of international price discrimination, where the price of a product, when sold in the importing country, is less than the price of that product in the market of the exporting country. To identify such a situation it is sometimes necessary to undertake some complex analytical steps to identify the appropriate price. In case of dispute, it is subject to a settlement before the Dispute Settlement Body of the WTO. The article does not want to draw a negative image of the potential reform for international economic law. What the author wants to highlight is the limitations of legal reform as the cure for systemic problems. Furthermore, the relationship between the expected reform and the conception of how the law should work need to be considered. The starting point is understanding that to produce the desired outcomes, an appreciation of the complexities of law is required. A potential reform must be tempered by sensitivity to law’s multifaceted nature, working not only in mechanistic terms but also as a powerful constraint, an empoweror and constitutor of identities both internationally and domestically.
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