Two broad interpretations currently prevail in the literature on developing country participation in the GATT. The first suggests that developing countries spent most of their time in the GATT negotiating to be relieved of various commitments, focusing on the pursuit of industrialization through import substitution and/or free-riding on the commitments made by their industrial counterparts. The second interpretation suggests that developing countries spent the majority of their time in the GATT either as ‘quiet bystanders’ lacking the expertise or political representation to participate fully, or else attempting to redress biases in the institution's design. The problem with both of these interpretations is that while each has merit neither offers a sufficiently rounded account of developing country participation. Our purpose in this paper is to offer an alternative account of developing country participation that shows more accurately the extent and variation of that participation. We argue that throughout the development of the GATT developing countries were active participants that consistently sought to have an impact on the nature and direction of the multilateral trading system. We also argue that while the energy of developing countries was often directed towards negotiating more favourable treatment for themselves, this was a result more of the asymmetrical manner in which the GATT was deployed and a consequence of their relative underdevelopment than of a desire to free-ride on the favourable trading conditions created by the concession exchanging activities of others.

This article aims at analysing the merits and limits of ‘cross-retaliation’ as a mechanism to induce compliance in WTO dispute settlement, specifically from the perspective of developing countries. The focus is on cross-agreement retaliation, in particular with respect to the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), as this seems to be the most ‘promising’ area for developing countries. Although there are several legal, economic, and administrative difficulties related to the implementation of a suspension of TRIPS obligations and there is so far no practical experience, this seems to remain an interesting option for developing countries – or at least for the largest ones among them – wishing to obtain greater leverage in the system.

In the softwood lumber dispute, the United States argues that Canada's forestry practices, especially the fees charged by provincial governments to private firms to harvest trees on public lands (stumpage rights), result in undue subsidization of Canadian lumber. Within the World Trade Organization, the concept of subsidy is defined as a ‘government financial contribution’ that confers a ‘benefit’ on firms and that is ‘specific’. In US–Softwood Lumber IV, the WTO authorities ruled that stumpage rights were specific and constituted a financial contribution through the provision of a good (timber). However, in order to demonstrate whether and to what extent these rights confer a benefit on lumber producers, the United States still has to ensure that its methodology to assess the ‘adequacy of remuneration’ is compatible with WTO provisions and to conduct a satisfactory ‘pass-through’ analysis of the alleged input stumpage subsidy to unrelated downstream lumber producers.