[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Page 7972]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                      WTO APPELLATE BODY DECISION

  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, two weeks ago, the World Trade 
Organization's Appellate Body issued a decision affirming a Dispute 
Settlement Panel opinion from last December that ruled that the United 
States' imposition in July 1999 of restrictions on imports of lamb meat 
under Section 201 of the Trade Act of 1974 was inconsistent with our 
obligations under the WTO's Agreement on Safeguards. The December Panel 
decision was so obviously wrong in virtually every respect that one 
would have expected the Appellate Body to reverse the panel and 
recognize the U.S. International Trade Commission's decision for the 
well-reasoned and balanced determination that it was. Instead, the 
Appellate Body has once again taken it upon itself to substitute its 
judgment for the ITC's. This is a continuation of a troubling trend, in 
which WTO dispute settlement panels and the Appellate Body fail to give 
adequate deference to expert administrative bodies that have carefully 
reviewed the facts. This kind of decision risks eroding U.S. support 
for the WTO's dispute settlement procedures.
  While there is a lot not to like in the Appellate Body's decision, I 
am particularly outraged by the Appellate Body's conclusion that the 
ITC erred in concluding that lamb farmers, ranchers, and commercial 
feeders are properly part of the domestic industry for purposes of 
determining injury and threat of injury. The Appellate Body concluded 
that growers and feeders produce a product--live lambs--that cannot 
strictly be considered ``like'' lamb meat within the meaning of the WTO 
Safeguards Agreement, and by implication, under Section 201 of the 
Trade Act of 1974; according to the Appellate Body, only packers and 
processors produce a ``like'' product. Had this been an antidumping or 
countervailing duty decision, such a conclusion would have precluded 
lamb growers and feeders from petitioning for relief along with packers 
and processors--a notion that I find intolerable. Fortunately, Section 
201 and the Safeguards Agreement give standing to producers of both 
``like'' and ``directly competitive'' products, and the Appellate 
Body's opinion appears to leave open the possibility that lamb growers 
and feeders could properly be counted as part of the domestic industry 
on the grounds that live lambs are ``directly competitive with,'' as 
opposed to ``like,'' lamb meat.
  The WTO will lose all credibility if growers of agricultural products 
are disqualified from petitioning for relief when massive imports of 
food products create oversupplies and cause domestic price levels to 
plummet. Thousands of families in my home state have a long history of 
sheep ranching. Sheep ranchers and farmers are the very heart of the 
U.S. industry producing lamb meat, and the WTO needs to recognize such 
basic economic realities.
  Predictably, the government of Australia and New Zealand, which 
brought the WTO appeal, have already called for the United States to 
immediately terminate the U.S. import relief program in response to the 
Appellate Body's decision. As bad as the Appellate Body's decision is, 
I believe that it is clear that it does not require termination of the 
United States' import relief program for the lamb industry. I am today 
calling on U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick to reject 
Australia and New Zealand's demands and instead invoke the procedure 
prescribed by Section 129 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act. 
Ambassador Zoellick should promptly request the ITC to provide him with 
an advisory report on whether it believes that its original decision 
can be brought into compliance with the Appellate Body's decision. If 
that advice is affirmative, I hope and expect that Ambassador Zoellick 
will take the further prescribed step of asking the ITC to issue a 
revised determination in conformity with the Appellate Body's decision.
  The period of relief originally proclaimed by President Clinton is 
scheduled to run through July of next year, and I am confident that the 
ITC will be able to revise its original determination so that this 
badly needed relief can run its course. In the meantime, I call upon 
President Bush--whose own home state is the United States' largest 
producer of lamb--to direct USDA and other agencies to redouble their 
efforts to see that the industry gets the full measure of assistance 
that it was promised as part of the import relief package.

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