NAFTA’s “Linchpin”: Dispute Settlement Mechanisms

In bringing about the largest bilateral trade relationship in human history (between Canada and the United States), North American integration wrestled against stubborn nationalistic practices and infinite bilateral feuds right from the very start—as the previous two chapters exposed over trade and investment.1 Not surprisingly, then, dispute settlement was made an essential component of regional integration: its inevitable role in an uneven terrain profited from both incremental growth and incidental developments. It was also not surprising that Canada’s withdrawal from CUFTA negotiations on September 23, 1987, which opened up North America’s experimentation with dispute settlement,2 was combined with the US proposal for premising this upon a binational panel framework to adjudicate dumping/countervailing disputes.3 The resultant arrangements were both institutionally novel and pragmatic enough to both countries for Gilbert R. Winham to call them a “linchpin,”4 and to set the stage for even more breathtaking arrangements to deal with investment disputes.