Trade Restrictions and National Security Exceptions

In 2019, the WTO panel opened Pandora's box and adjudicated for the first-time invocation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, 1994 (GATT) national security exception. It occurred against the background of the WTO Members’ growing desire to justify their trade-restrictive measures on national security grounds. This development reflects not only confluence between economic policies and national security strategies that is vividly described as ‘securitisation of economic policy and economisation of strategic policy’ but also the emergence of novel national security threats. In this context, this chapter analyses possible alternatives to litigation aimed at the preservation of balance between the economic liberalization agenda of the multilateral trading system and protection of national security interests. Towards this end, a comprehensive summary of the main approaches to balancing trade-distortive national security measures and trade commitments and their in-depth analysis are provided. Furthermore, these alternatives are evaluated against the backdrop of four case studies, which represent conventional and novel types of national security threats. Based on the analysis, normative arguments are advanced.