As a trade lawyer, it's exciting for me to see GATT Article XX invoked, implicitly anyway, in the U.S. Presidential campaign:
Presidential Candidate Chris Dodd called for suspending all imports of toys and food from China ...
"This is an issue of safety," said Dodd. "Parents should be confident that the toys and food that they give their children have been inspected and are safe. That's why I am calling on the President to use his authority to immediately suspend all imports of toys and food from China. It's not enough to simply talk about working for fair trade agreements. We need leadership that will act to enforce fair trade. We have the legal right and power under the WTO to keep products out of our country that threaten the health and safety of our families, and I'm going to do all I can to ensure we do so."
Did someone on his campaign staff actually do a memo examining what WTO rules said about this? Dodd is just a minor candidate, of course, so this may not go anywhere. (Athough the other candidates have said things along the same lines.) But with every new children's toy recall, the chances of something like this actually happening seem to grow.
