India's WTO Challenge to Drug Enforcement Conditions in the European Community Generalized System of Preferences: A Little Known Case with Major Repercussions for "Political" Conditionality in US Trade Policy

The use of trade sanctions for broad foreign policy purposes has been a matter of longstanding controversy in the US. Apart from questioning the effectiveness of such sanctions, and pointing out that they may have innocent victims, free traders often claim that sanctions violate the rules of the WTO. Here, Howse details a case brought by India to the WTO dispute mechanism, which is against the European Community (EC) that originally attacked conditions relating to the environment, labor rights, and drug enforcement.