The World Trade Organization and COVID-19-Related Trade Measures

Jelisavac Trošić, Sanja (2021) The World Trade Organization and COVID-19-Related Trade Measures. In: International Organizations and States' Response to COVID-19. Institute of International Politics and Economics, Belgrade, pp. 127-144. ISBN 978-86-7067-291-8

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Abstract

In a short period of time, COVID-19 has become much bigger than just a health problem. Among other things, it has disrupted the global economy and world trade, with the biggest negative impact of the pandemic outbreak in the international services sector. During the COVID-19 crisis, in order to preserve the national economy, states started introducing trade-related measures. These measures had the potential to disrupt trade flows, supply chains, and eventually even the whole system of world trade. The paper examines the compliance of trade restriction measures taken in response to COVID-19 with the WTO rules and what the policy of the WTO was during this crisis. Since the elimination of trade restrictions is one of the WTO basic principles, this introduction of a number of restrictions had to meet certain preconditions prescribed by the WTO agreements, such as transparency, temporality, and not being discriminatory towards different countries, etc. Since the COVID-19 crisis is still ongoing, we concluded that most countries have introduced some form of trade policy measures, most of them in the form of technical barriers to trade and sanitary and phytosanitary measures, and that the introduced measures will not all be removed as long as there is an existing threat and insecurity.

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