Profile: David Palmeter

Trade and Customs

Biography: Trade & Customs

David Palmeter advises governments and interested private parties in dispute settlement proceedings in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Previously, he counselled parties in disputes before panels of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

He was involved in WTO dispute settlement from the very start of the organisation, advising Singapore in the first WTO dispute. Mr Palmeter also advised the government of Brazil and a Brazilian oil company in the first case to reach a formal decision and has since represented numerous governments and private parties in major WTO cases involving anti-dumping, subsidies, government procurement and agriculture agreements.

Mr Palmeter was chairman of the International Bar Association's trade and customs law subcommittee of the antitrust and trade law committee from 1989 to 1993, serving from 1994 to 1998 as its liaison to GATT, the WTO and the United Nations Committee for Trade and Development. He is co-author of the leading text in the field of WTO dispute settlement, the second edition of which was published in 2004 by Cambridge University Press, and has written many other articles and books, including The WTO as a Legal System: Essays on International Trade Law and Policy, 2003. He is a regular lecturer at the International Law Institute and has lectured on WTO matters at American, Columbia and Georgetown Universities and Dartmouth College in the US and at the College of Europe, the European University Institute and the Universities of Berne, Liège, Neuchãtel and St Gallen in Europe. Mr Palmeter has more than 25 years' experience representing importers and exporters in antidumping, countervailing duty and safeguard investigations in the United States.