This chapter deals with the WTO rules applicable to sanitary and phytosanitary measures, commonly referred to as ‘SPS measures’. Generally speaking, SPS measures are measures aimed at the protection of human, animal, or plant life or health from certain specified risks. The negotiators of the WTO agreements considered that these measures merited special attention for two reasons: first, because the preservation of domestic regulatory autonomy was, and still is, considered of particular importance where health risks are at issue; and, second, because of the close link between SPS measures and agricultural trade, a sector that is notoriously difficult to liberalise. As a result, SPS measures are dealt with in a separate agreement, the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, commonly referred to as the ‘SPS Agreement’. This Agreement provides for rights and obligations, which, although broadly similar, differ in certain key respects from those provided in the GATT 1994 and the TBT Agreement.

Optimization is a human instinct. People constantly seek to improve their lives and the systems that surround them. Optimization is intrinsic in biology, as exemplified by the evolution of species. Birds optimize their wings’ shape in real time, and dogs have been shown to find optimal trajectories. Even more broadly, many laws of physics relate to optimization, such as the principle of minimum energy. As Leonhard Euler once wrote, “nothing at all takes place in the universe in which some rule of maximum or minimum does not appear.”

While continued vigilance regarding customs duties and quantitative restrictions is increasingly important since the outbreak of the current trade wars, the importance of these traditional barriers to trade has gradually diminished over the past decades.1 Regulatory measures affecting trade in goods now commonly raise a more pressing challenge for international trade and the multilateral trading system.2 As discussed in Chapter 7, such regulatory measures can take the form of technical barriers to trade. This chapter deals with the WTO rules applicable to technical barriers to trade (TBT). The next chapter, Chapter 14, will deal with the different WTO rules applicable to sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures, which pose challenges to international trade similar to technical barriers to trade.

This chapter provides helpful historical context for the methods discussed in this book. Nothing else in the book depends on familiarity with the material in this chapter, so it can be skipped. However, this history makes connections between the various topics that will enrich the big picture of optimization as you become familiar with the material in the rest of the book, so you might want to revisit this chapter.

In addition to rules on dumping and anti-dumping measures, WTO law also includes rules on another practice that may or may not be considered unfair, namely, subsidisation. Subsidies are a very sensitive matter in international trade relations. On the one hand, subsidies are evidently used by governments to pursue and promote important and fully legitimate objectives of economic and social policy. On the other hand, subsidies may have adverse effects on the interests of trading partners whose industry may suffer, in its domestic or export markets, from unfair competition with subsidised products. Disputes about subsidies, and in particular subsidies to ‘strategic economic sectors’, have been prominent on the GATT/WTO agenda. Most noteworthy are the long-running disputes initiated by the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) in respect of subsidies to their respective civil aircraft industry.1 Agricultural subsidies promoting production and export of commodities such as cotton2 or sugar3 have also triggered much WTO litigation.

This closing section offers a brief reflection on how to start exploring the rich and varied history of poetry in English.

As stated in Chapter 1, there are two main non-discrimination obligations under WTO law: the most-favoured-nation (MFN) treatment obligation, discussed in Chapter 4; and the national treatment obligation, which is discussed in this chapter. In simple terms, a national treatment obligation relates to whether a country favours its products, services, or service suppliers over the like products, services, or service suppliers from other countries. A national treatment obligation prohibits a country to discriminate against other countries. The national treatment obligation under WTO law applies – albeit not in the same manner – to trade in goods as well as trade in services. The key provisions dealing with the national treatment obligation for measures affecting trade in goods are Articles III:2 and III:4 of the GATT 1994. The key provision dealing with the national treatment obligation for measures affecting trade in services is Article XVII:1 of the GATS. In this chapter, we will discuss these national treatment obligations in turn.1

As mentioned in , most engineering systems are multidisciplinary, motivating the development of multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO). The analysis of multidisciplinary systems requires coupled models and coupled solvers. We prefer the term component instead of discipline or model because it is more general. However, we use these terms interchangeably depending on the context. When components in a system represent different physics, the term multiphysics is commonly used.

The WTO dispute settlement system has been operational for more than two decades now. In that period, it has arguably been the most prolific of all international State-to-State dispute settlement systems. Between 1 January 1995 and 1 October 2020, a total of 596 disputes were brought to the WTO for resolution.5 In more than one-fifth of these disputes, the parties were able to reach an amicable solution through consultations, or the dispute was otherwise resolved without recourse to adjudication. In other disputes, parties have resorted to adjudication. Between 1 January 1995 and 1 October 2020, such adjudication resulted in 248 reports of dispute settlement panels and 170 reports of the Appellate Body,6 meaning that almost 70 per cent of circulated panel reports have been appealed.7 During the same period, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague rendered seventy-eight judgments and seven advisory opinions, and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in Hamburg rendered fifteen judgments and two advisory opinions and issued orders in another fourteen cases.8 Also in comparison to its ‘predecessor’, the GATT dispute settlement system, the WTO dispute settlement system has been very active.

We solve these problems using gradient information to determine a series of steps from a starting guess (or initial design) to the optimum, as shown in Fig. 4.1. We assume the objective function to be nonlinear, $C^2$ continuous, and deterministic. We do not assume unimodality or multimodality, and there is no guarantee that the algorithm finds the global optimum. Referring to the attributes that classify an optimization problem (Fig. 1.22), the optimization algorithms discussed in this chapter range from first to second order, perform a local search, and evaluate the function directly. The algorithms are based on mathematical principles rather than heuristics.

The gradient-based optimization methods introduced in Chapters 4 and 5 require the derivatives of the objective and constraints with respect to the design variables, as illustrated in Fig. 6.1. Derivatives also play a central role in other numerical algorithms. For example, the Newton-based methods introduced in Section 3.8 require the derivatives of the residuals.

The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) imposes a positive regulatory obligation on Members to ensure a minimum level of protection and enforcement of intellectual property (IP) rights in their territories.

Part I of the TRIPS Agreement contains general provisions and basic principles that apply to all the IP rights falling within its coverage. Part II is subdivided into eight sections, each dealing with a different area of IP protection. Part III sets out the obligations of Members with regard to the enforcement of IP rights. The remainder of the TRIPS Agreement addresses issues relating to the acquisition and maintenance of IP rights, and contains institutional and procedural provisions.