Dispute Settlement at the World Trade Organization, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the Pacific Alliance

In the light of the present crisis in the World Trade Organization (WTO) Appellate Body, some authors have argued that litigation under regional trade agreements will increase. We disagree with such generalized statements. In this article, we examine whether it is likely that the Pacific Alliance (PA) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) will become alternative litigation fora to the WTO in the foreseeable future. Our assumption is that PA and CPTPP parties may deviate from WTO dispute settlement systems to those of PA and CPTPP if the latter accommodate dispute settlement patterns observed at the WTO. We first identify patterns in past WTO litigation among PA and CPTPP parties; we then assess whether the PA and CPTPP dispute settlement systems can settle disputes that follow those patterns. WTO dispute settlement patterns allow us to conclude that, ceteris paribus, the probability of deviating from WTO to PA and/or CPTPP dispute settlement is higher among developing parties. These litigation fora are therefore likely to become alternatives for all PA but only for certain CPTPP parties.