Smart Threats and Success in the WTO Dispute Settlement Process: An Examination of the 2002 US Steel Safeguard Tariffs.

This paper shows that domestic political factors are important in determining the outcomes of the WTO dispute settlement process by determining what factors make retaliatory threats credible and potentially harmful. In particular, this paper provides evidence that the 2002 US Steel tariffs were rescinded after a WTO ruling against the US not because of the economic power of the EU or legal factors alone, but also because of domestic political factors that were provoked from the smart retaliatory threat produced by the EU. The implications of this paper are that in order for retaliatory threats to have their full intended impact, they must be able to produce political consequences for the defendant government. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]