What happens when a country violates the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)?
I’m not an expert, but I believe the WTO (and the GATS) has members agree to accept each others trade without extra tariffs (if only it were that simple). For example, I know there have been recent disagreement over steel imports to the US. Parochial Republicans imposed a tariff on imported steel to shore up votes in US steel towns, the Eurpeans (and Australia) got cranky, and the EU threatened to put tariffs on goods they import from the US. There was a similar case about bananas a couple of years ago. Both should be readily googleable. I think the ‘suspending concessions’ talk is their way of saying the natural order of things is for imported (i.e. US produced) goods to have a tariff applied to make local Antiguan goods more competitive, and the GATS concessions will be removed to restore this if the US won’t play ball. I don’t believe intellectual property law is in any way involved (and is subject to a different agreement, the Berne convention).
