WTO Takes on Credit Card Regulations

The WTO issued its first ever ruling on a dispute over financial services earlier this morning. The case was brought in 2010 by the Obama administration against China's credit card policies.

This sprawling case - which alleged that a myriad of diverse Chinese policies operated collectively to violate WTO rules - failed on most counts.

But even the partial U.S. success raises more questions than in answers. U.S. credit card companies were reportedly less than enthusiastic about the case, and even the most optimistic U.S. job impact of China's credit card policies represent only a drop in the bucket relative to the considerable job displacement caused by Chinese industrial policies in U.S. manufacturing.

The greater significance of the ruling is in the precedent that it sets of a WTO member being willing to tackle another member's financial policies. Those of us who have raised the alarm about the conflict of the WTO's services agreement with financial regulation have often been told not to worry... that diplomatic restraint would keep a case from ever being launched. Even if launched, the WTO's institutional interests would keep it, the argument went, from ruling against a nation's policies.

Today's ruling totally undermines both aspects of this argument.

So what did the ruling - authored by Virachai Plasai (Thailand), Elaine Feldman (Canada) and Martin Redrado (Argentina) - say?

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Posted by Todd Tucker at 6:40pm in Financial Services , WTO | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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