North America

On April 11, 2001 the US and the EU reached an agreement (the "Agreement") in the decade-long dispute over the EU's banana import regime.  The Agreement requires the EU to abandon its proposal to institute on July 1 a "first-come-first-served" licensing regulation and to move in 2 stages to a tariff-only system by 2006.

 

Agriculture has traditionally been a primary source of economic tension between the United States and the European Union. The dispute over the EU's banana regime has been among the most contentious in recent years. It is also among the more legally and politically complex. 

 

In its current Term, the Supreme Court will address aspects of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act for the first time since its decision in Saudi Arabia v. Nelson a decade earlier. [1]   Although the issues in Dole Food Company v. Patrickson appear technical, they are not without practical significance, and one of them raises profound questions about the nature of foreign sovereign immunity.

 

On November 10, 2003 the World Trade Organization Appellate Body issued its report in the complaint brought by Brazil, China, the European Communities, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, and Switzerland against the US imposition of safeguard measures on certain steel products. [1] The Appellate Body upheld a prior Panel ruling that the US measures were inconsistent with the WTO Safeguards Agreement and GATT 1994. [2] Consequently the Appellate Body recommended that the WTO Dispute Settlement Body request the US to bring its measures into conformity. [3] [4]