The “National Security Exception” and the World Trade Organization

Legal Sidebar

The “National Security Exception” and the
World Trade Organization
November 28, 2018
Introduction
Recent international trade disputes between the United States and other Members of the World Trade
Organization (WTO) have raised thorny questions about the relationship between national sovereignty
and the multilateral rules-based trading system. In response to the Trump Administration’s imposition of
tariffs on U.S. imports of certain steel and aluminum products pursuant to authority provided in Section
232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, several WTO Members have brought dispute settlement cases
against the United States. The complaining parties, which include Canada, China, and the European
Union, among others, have argued that the Section 232 measures, along with exemptions from the
application of these measures for certain countries, are contrary to U.S. obligations in the WTO
agreements. Many of these obligations are contained within various provisions in the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the WTO’s foundational agreement governing parties’ international trade in
goods. In retaliation to the Administration’s tariffs, some of the complaining countries have imposed
tariffs on certain U.S. exports without awaiting the outcome of WTO dispute settlement proceedings.
These retaliatory measures, in turn, have been challenged by the United States at the WTO.
In defense of the steel and aluminum tariffs, the United States has cited national security reasons.
Specifically, the United States contends that the tariffs are necessary to ensure the long-term viability of
the domestic steel and aluminum industries, which must meet U.S. national defense requirements, by
protecting the industries from foreign competition. The United States has argued that even if the steel and
aluminum measures are inconsistent with U.S. obligations under the GATT, a WTO adjudicator (e.g., a
WTO panel) cannot examine whether the Section 232 measures violate the GATT because the United
States considers the measures to be necessary for the protection of its “essential security interests” under
GATT Article XXI—the so-called “national security exception.”
This Sidebar examines the meaning of the national security exception in Article XXI of the GATT—a
provision also implicated in a recent WTO dispute between Russia and Ukraine; a blockade of Qatar by
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates; and a few other disputes. Members of Congress
have an interest in the meaning of the exception and its interaction with federal laws such as Section 232
because of Congress’s specific constitutional authority to impose tariffs and regulate foreign commerce.
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Congress also funds and oversees federal agencies involved in Section 232 investigations, along with the
Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), which represents the United States in WTO
dispute settlement cases.
This Sidebar does not examine whether the United States could successfully invoke GATT Article XXI to
defend against claims brought under other WTO Agreements that lack a similar exception for national
security (e.g., claims alleging that the Section 232 measures violate the WTO’s Safeguards Agreement).
Nor does it consider whether other WTO Members could seek compensation from the United States by
bringing a “non-violation claim” under GATT Article XXIII, alleging that even if the Section 232
measures do not violate the agreements because a WTO panel deems them justified under Article XXI,
the measures nonetheless undermine the benefits that the complaining Member could reasonably have
expected to obtain from WTO membership.
GATT Article XXI’s Exception for Essential Security
Interests
GATT Article XXI’s national security exception provides, in relevant part, the following:
Nothing in this Agreement shall be construed
. . . .
(b) to prevent any [member country] from taking any action which it considers necessary for the
protection of its essential security interests
(i) relating to fissionable materials or the materials from which they are derived;
(ii) relating to the traffic in arms, ammunition and implements of war and to such traffic in other
goods and materials as is carried on directly or indirectly for the purpose of supplying a military
establishment;
(iii) taken in time of war or other emergency in international relations; or
(c) to prevent any [member country] from taking any action in pursuance of its obligations under the
United Nations Charter for the maintenance of international peace and security.
GATT Article XXI does not clearly address whether a WTO panel should either (1) completely defer to a
WTO Member’s judgment that its trade measures are justified to protect the Member’s national security
or (2) evaluate, at least to some degree, whether the Member’s use of the exception is valid. Although
WTO Members and parties to the organization’s predecessor, the GATT, have invoked Article XXI a few
times in trade disputes, neither the WTO members nor a WTO panel have formally interpreted the Article
XXI exception to define its scope.
In the absence of formal guidance, if a WTO panel or the WTO’s Appellate Body (which hears appeals
from panel rulings) were to interpret Article XXI, the deciding body would likely rely on Article 3.2 of
the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Understanding, which states that the WTO agreements should be
interpreted “in accordance with customary rules of interpretation of public international law.” The WTO’s
Appellate Body has not established a formal process for interpreting the WTO agreements, but it has
generally relied on the rules for treaty interpretation incorporated into Articles 31-33 of the Vienna
Convention on the Law of Treaties (Vienna Convention) to ascertain the intended meaning of WTO
agreement provisions.
In past cases, the Appellate Body’s interpretive approach has examined various factors, including three
particularly relevant to Article XXI’s interpretation: (1) “the ordinary meaning to be given to the terms of
the [WTO agreements] in their context and in the light of [their] object and purpose”—a method that also

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uses relevant canons of treaty interpretation (e.g., the principle that an interpreter must give effect to all
the terms of a treaty); (2) WTO Members’ subsequent practices in applying the WTO agreements that
establish consensus of the WTO membership as to the agreements’ interpretation; and (3) relevant rules of
international law that do not conflict with the agreements (e.g., the Vienna Convention’s concept of “good
faith”). The Appellate Body has sometimes supplemented the meaning derived from these methods by
considering the drafting history of the provision.
Text, Context, and Purpose of the WTO Agreements
As noted, the Appellate Body’s approach to interpreting the WTO agreements has often focused on the
ordinary meaning of the relevant WTO provisions, as informed by the context in which those provisions
appear, and in light of the purposes of all of the WTO agreements. Applying these interpretive methods to
Article XXI provides some guidance as to its intended meaning. On the one hand, Article XXI, which
states that nothing in the GATT prevents a WTO Member from taking “any action which it considers
necessary” to protect its “essential security interests,” arguably makes each WTO Member the sole judge
of whether its trade-restrictive actions are justified. In other words, once a WTO Member has invoked the
exception to justify a measure potentially inconsistent with its GATT obligations, a WTO panel cannot
independently evaluate whether the WTO Member’s use of the exception is essential to its security
interests or fits within the enumerated list of national security justifications in Article XXI(b).
Interpretive context provided by other GATT provisions arguably supports this broad view of the Article
XXI exception. For example, GATT Article XX provides general, non-security-related exceptions to
GATT obligations; WTO Members can rely upon these exceptions when implementing certain public
policy measures that restrict trade (e.g., measures relating to the conservation of exhaustible natural
resources). But unlike the Article XXI exception, GATT Article XX does not provide an exception for
measures that an individual Member subjectively “considers necessary” to protect its interests. Perhaps as
a result, WTO panels have examined whether a Member’s invocation of an Article XX exception is
objectively valid. Thus, it could be argued that, in contrast to the general exceptions in Article XX, the
Article XXI national security exception was intended to be “self-judging.” And several other provisions
of the WTO agreements beside Article XXI use the word “considers” when reserving judgment about a
particular matter to a single specified actor (e.g., a WTO Member).
A broad reading of Article XXI is also arguably consistent with the WTO’s stated objective to serve as the
“common institutional framework for the conduct of trade relations among its Members.” The WTO is a
trade organization that arguably lacks competence to opine on matters of national security—a point made
by one of the representatives of the parties to the drafting of the GATT.
On the other hand, it could be argued that a WTO panel should not completely defer to a WTO Member’s
judgment about the appropriateness of invoking GATT Article XXI and must evaluate whether use of the
exception is proper. At least one scholar and former WTO Appellate Body Member has argued that the
United States must at least demonstrate to the panel that the Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum fit
within one of the three specific categories of actions that a Member may take for national security reasons
enumerated in Article XXI(b): (1) actions related to nuclear materials; (2) actions related to traffic in arms
or ammunition and traffic in other goods “carried on directly or indirectly for the purpose of supplying a
military establishment”; and (3) actions “taken in time of war or other emergency in international
relations.”
A narrower view of the exception might also draw support from certain canons of treaty interpretation.
The Appellate Body has repeatedly applied the principle that an interpretation must give effect to all
provisions of a treaty. If a WTO panel declined to evaluate whether the United States’ justification for the
Section 232 measures fits within Article XXI(b)’s list, the list would arguably become ineffective,
contravening this principle of treaty interpretation. Furthermore, the Appellate Body has stated that, under

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the Vienna Convention, a treaty should be interpreted under the assumption that its parties will make
reasonable use of its exceptions and perform their obligations in good faith. Therefore, the United States
arguably must prove that it adopted the Section 232 measures in good faith for national security reasons
rather than to circumvent its trade obligations and protect domestic industries.
The argument for a more limited scope of the Article XXI exception may also draw support from one of
the central purposes of the WTO agreements and dispute settlement system: to provide “security and
predictability to the multilateral trading system” so that businesses can conduct international trade with
certainty. Arguably, allowing a WTO Member to take any measure it deems essential to its security
interests would defeat this objective by undermining the predictability and certainty of the rules-based
system. A reading of Article XXI that permits WTO Members to retain complete discretion over use of
the exception could lead countries to enact a multitude of protectionist measures under the guise of
national security, potentially undermining the purpose of WTO rules.
Other Interpretive Methods
Other interpretive methods may also be relevant to the meaning of Article XXI. Historical practice
involving the invocation of Article XXI under the WTO agreements and the GATT demonstrates that
member countries have often argued that each country is the sole judge of questions relating to its own
security interests. Parties to the GATT or WTO agreements adopted this view in several disputes, many of
which were resolved informally through diplomacy. These disputes include:
 a dispute settlement case from 1949 involving U.S. export licensing controls and
Czechoslovakia;
 Ghana’s boycott of Portuguese goods in the 1960s;
 a Swedish import quota system for footwear in the 1970s;
 restrictions on Argentinian imports in the 1980s;
 a U.S. trade embargo against Nicaragua in the 1980s; and
 a WTO dispute between the United States and European Union over the Helms-Burton
Act, which authorized civil lawsuits against foreign companies that dealt in property that
Cuba had expropriated from U.S. citizens.
Furthermore, an interpretation of Article XXI that would allow a WTO panel to review a WTO Member’s
use of the exception would arguably interfere with a Member’s sovereignty because the panel could
substitute its judgment regarding the validity of a national security justification for that of the invoking
Member. The United States has argued that Article XXI’s drafting history, which a panel might rely upon
as a supplementary means of interpretation, shows that the drafters intended to preclude such a result.
On the other hand, although the practices of some parties to the GATT suggest that the Article XXI
exception is broad, this historical practice is not necessarily an indication of how the entire WTO
membership interprets the Article XXI exception. Support can be found in the early drafting history of
Article XXI for the notion that a panel may review a WTO Member’s use of the Article XXI exception.
One of the U.S. negotiators and drafters of an early version of Article XXI reportedly stated that the
exception was not intended to be “so broad that, under the guise of security, countries will put on
measures which really have a commercial purpose,” suggesting some limits to the scope of Article XXI.
Next Steps
On November 21, the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body agreed to establish panels to hear the disputes
over the Section 232 tariffs and retaliatory countermeasures on U.S. imports. The establishment of a panel
is the first stage in the formal dispute settlement process. Nonetheless, it is possible that one or more of

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the parties will settle these disputes, effectively terminating the panel process prior to a ruling. In the
event that a compromise is reached—or a WTO panel rules on the scope of the national security exception
in a separate dispute—this Sidebar will be updated accordingly.


Author Information

Brandon J. Murrill

Legislative Attorney





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