Death, Taxes and Trade Disputes

Douglas Irwin, Free Trade Under Fire (3rd ed., 2009):

The tuna dispute was resolved in 1992 when the United States, Mexico, and eight other tuna-fishing nations signed an international agreement to regulate the conditions of tuna fishing.

Bridges Trade News Digest, Nov. 16, 2011:

At its last meeting on 11 November, the WTO Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) decided to extend the deadline for submitting an appeal on the latest Tuna-Dolphin (DS381) ruling issued in September (see Bridges Weekly, 21 September 2011).

In light of the Appellate Body’s substantial workload, the US and Mexico had jointly requested an extension of the normally sixty-day period, which otherwise would have expired on 15 November. In accordance with the agreed extension, an appeal will have to be submitted no later than 20 January.

Lesson: never use the word "resolved" when writing about trade disputes....

To be fair to Irwin, whose book I recommend (and assign to students), one could consider "Tuna-Dolphin" to be a series of disputes, one of which was resolved in 1992.