Recent transatlantic relations have been plagued by a seemingly endless
series of disputes over trade and other economic and political interests.
Some of these disputes have been amongst the most prominent of the WTO era:
the Bananas Case, the Beef Hormones Case and over the application of the
Helms-Burton Act. This book analyzes the source of transatlantic disputes, the means
employed to prevent and settle such disputes both bilaterally and through
the dispute settlement mechanism of the of the WTO, and to identify
promising areas for reform.

This book begins with a survey of transatlantic governance and dispute
settlement problems. Part II analyzes 14 case-studies of transatlantic
economic and regulatory disputes written by leading EU and US experts. The
analytical papers in Part III examine the disputes in the broader context of
legal, economic and political theories of dispute prevention and dispute
settlement. Part IV offers policy recommendations from EU and US
policy-makers and academics. Most of the more than 20 contributors conclude
that joint EU-US leadership in multilateral institutions (e.g. for trade
liberalization, dispute prevention and dispute settlement in the WTO) offers
advantages over bilateral approaches. By contrast, a potential
transatlantic free-trade association (TAFTA) remains a second-best approach
which might not prevent many of the transatlantic disputes over internal
trade-related domestic policies. Transatlantic initiatives e.g. for
regulatory cooperation and citizen-oriented institutional reforms can,
however, serve as precedents for multilateral reforms (e.g. of WTO rules).