This timely and thought-provoking work analyses the conduct of Mexico s international trade litigation from 1986 to 2007. The book provides a concrete perspective on how Mexico has been using the legal procedures available to adjudicate its international trade rights, giving the reader a first-hand experience on international trade litigation.

When litigating trade disputes, Mexico must work within a specific regulatory framework that is both multilateral (World Trade Organization (WTO)) and bilateral (Preferential Trade Agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)). Its involvement is constrained domestically by its administrative capacity, which in turn imposes a need to prioritize, in the light of political economy, which disputes to pursue and how far.

In addition:

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• It exhaustively examines all cases providing a well-reasoned explanation of Mexico s conduct and achievements (inputs and outputs).
• It assesses the value of a favourable Panel/Appellate Body report (findings won) in light of implementation, based on Mexico s data.
• It presents observations on the increasing or decreasing initial bargaining power through the utilization of legal remedies.
• It touches on the regional and multilateral interaction of substantive law, procedural law and legal remedies.

After 1986, Mexico liberalized its economy quickly and massively. Trade bloomed and so did disputes. How to handle such disputes became a key element. Huerta-Goldman achieves a unique and groundbreaking analysis of Mexico s trade litigation, including from the perspective of the administrative organization and capacities, the bargaining power, and the realities of the underlying political economy. His methodology should be used for other jurisdictions. This book is certainly an outstanding and valuable contribution to the legal, political and economic literature of dispute settlement.

Alejandro Jara

Deputy Director General of the WTO

This volume by Huerta-Goldman fills a vacuum in the field of country-by-country investigation into the use of international trade litigation. Mexico, as a frequent user of DS mechanisms, has found itself arguing or defending substantially the same case, or related cases, in different fora. Thus Mexico is an excellent example of how a country can sort out, and make the best use of, the ever growing multiplicity of DS mechanisms. This work makes a valuable contribution to the evaluation of the functioning of trade DS mechanisms in various contexts global, regional and bilateral and under different sets of procedural rules.

Giorgio Sacerdoti

Bocconi University, Milano, and Appellate Body of the WTO, Geneva

In his book, Huerta-Goldman has given us a thorough and scholarly examination of Mexico s litigation experience under WTO and NAFTA. It is a highly useful contribution to the on-going discussion of how to strengthen these rules-based dispute mechanism models in order to improve the international trading system.

Rufus H. Yerxa

Deputy Director General of the WTO