WTO Issues Panel Report on India’s Domestic Content Requirements for Solar Products (February 24, 2016) [1]
On February 24, 2016, the World Trade Organization (WTO) issued the panel’s report [3] on India’s domestic content requirements for solar products, finding they violated India’s national treatment obligations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMs). According to a news report [4], the U.S. initiated the proceedings at the WTO in 2013, arguing that an Indian law from 2011 which requires certain cells be produced domestically violated WTO rules by discriminating against imports. The Panel agreed with the U.S. argument that local content requirements fall under the TRIMs Agreement, siding with previous decisions finding that “if [the] measures are local content requirements, they would necessarily be ‘trade-related’ because such requirements, by definition, always favour the use of domestic products over imported products, and therefore affect trade.” The Panel further examined the Illustrative List of the TRIMs Agreement, which describes types of measures falling under the agreement’s scope and noted that the Indian laws “‘require the purchase or use by an enterprise of products of domestic origin’ within the meaning of paragraph 1(a) of the TRIMs Illustrative List.” Having established this, the Panel further ruled that “TRIMs falling under [the] Illustrative List are necessarily inconsistent with Article III:4 of the GATT 1994, thus obviating the need for separate and additional examination of the legal elements of Article III:4 of the GATT 1994.”