Volume 142, No. 15 covering the 2nd Session of the 104th Congress (1995 - 1996) was published by the Congressional Record.
The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“DISPUTE SETTLEMENT IN THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION” mentioning the Environmental Protection Agency was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E174 on Feb. 5, 1996.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
DISPUTE SETTLEMENT IN THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION
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HON. PHILIP M. CRANE
of illinois
in the house of representatives
Thursday, February 1, 1996
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, the World Trade Organization [WTO] recently ruled against the United States in a case involving the Environmental Protection Agency's [EPA's] regulations on reformulated gasoline to achieve the standards of the Clean Air Act. Unfortunately, this decision has been portrayed by some as an assault on U.S. environmental laws. Nothing could be further from the truth.
To begin, it should be pointed out that the case involved an EPA regulation, not U.S. law, U.S. air quality standards, as legislated in the Clean Air Act, were not at issue. Rather, the case dealt with the different set of regulations that are imposed on imports of reformulated gasoline from those imposed on domestically refined reformulated gasoline. In the WTO, the case was filed under the national treatment clause which says that you cannot have one regulatory standard for imports and a different one for domestic products. This is a principle of trade that the United States, as the world's leading exporter, has espoused for years in our efforts to open new markets to U.S. goods and services. It works to protect the competitiveness of U.S. goods and services overseas by ensuring that our trading partners treat our exports in their markets in the same manner that they treat their own products.
I urge my colleagues to carefully study this decision and, more importantly, to learn the facts before urging action which would damage U.S. credibility in the short term and our trading relationships in the long run. Indeed, the United States fought to establish the WTO dispute settlement process because of the way it will help us pry open foreign markets to our products. Under the old GATT dispute settlement procedure, the United States filed the greatest number of cases of any member country. However, because countries could block the old dispute settlement process, we sometimes could not get decisions in cases that would have helped us remove barriers to our exports overseas. The new process established in the WTO removes the possibility of such obstruction and ensures that the procedure will work on a predictable timetable and that a decision will be rendered. Based on our history of using the GATT dispute settlement process, the new procedure is likely to be used frequently by the United States in the future to help us achieve our trade liberalization goals.
As chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade, I am proud of the great strides that the United States has made in recent years toward opening markets and removing barriers to trade around the world. As we work to ensure that our trading partners fulfill their WTO commitments, it is critical that we set an example by living up to our own.
In sum, I would like to quote from an editorial from the January 21, 1996 issue of the New York Times. The editorial, entitled ``Winning, by Losing on Trade,'' concludes:
The ruling helps establish the W.T.O. panels as deliberative judicial bodies willing and able to enforce rules of fair trade. That is beneficial to the United States, which brings more complaints to trade-dispute panels than any other country. Washington will win more than its cases in the years ahead. The W.T.O. has shown it can keep trading honest. That is a welcome development.
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