WTO Appellate Body Impasse

The Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is supposed to contain seven judges that are also known as the Supreme Court. At least three judges are required to attend a hearing of an appeal. On December 10, two of the last three remaining judges ended their terms.

A student who attended the WTO training course from China, YuQiong Deng stated that “[the US] has been blocking all the nominations for new judges [of the Appellate Body] since 2016.” She regarded this as a very concerning issue; she believed that if there are no new nominations, the Appellate Body would lose its function and no appeal will be heard.

According to Xinhuanet, the “Appellate Body impasse has imposed the most severe blow to the multilateral trading system since the establishment of the WTO in 1995.” The Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Chuengyin Hua, claimed that “the WTO Appellate Body has become another victim of U.S. unilateralism and protectionism.” China also claimed that they are willing to work together to solve this issue with WTO.

This issue of the WTO to be unable to reveal dispute rulings between nations due to the lack of judges is an international concern. The US has used its veto power to block all the nominations that caused this issue; however, they did not provide any explanations nor solutions to solve this situation. It is difficult to solve this issue as WTO cannot ignore the U.S.’s decision and their veto power. On the other hand, it is also difficult to retain the former functioning supreme court. This might directly cause some disputes between nations for not being able to resolve the issue with the original methods. The surprising situation brings in the concern of this system with the selection of nominates for the new Appellate Body judges.

The WTO should look for any solutions that would resolve this issue to their best ability. If this situation does not get resolved, the WTO might be losing a major part of their original function and system.