The Legality of Local Content Measures under WTO Law

Local content measures have proliferated and become a popular tool for governments to incentivize national industry. This article sets out a typology of such measures and analyses the legality of the different types of measures under WTO law. Questions arise not only with respect to national treatment, the government procurement exemption and the rules on state trading enterprises under the GATT, but also with respect to the TRIMs Agreement, the SCM Agreement as well as the GATS. The article concludes that very few measures can be considered compatible with WTO law.