In an extraordinary move US trade representatives are claiming that they never intended online gaming to be part of their services agreement when they signed up to the WTO, and therefore they will not honour their pledge to open the online gaming market in the US to foreign providers. According to Deputy US Trade Representative John Veroneau the US is “just clarifying (its) commitments.”

But even though countries are allowed to withdraw their commitments, under WTO rules it will also be the first time that any country has taken such a course of action in the face of a lost trade dispute, and could have disastrous consequences for the future of the WTO. If other countries decide to follow the United States’ lead and also pull out of commitments whenever trade disputes don’t go their way, there would simply be no future for the organisation.

The position of the United States is further compromised by the fact that it DID have the chance to exclude gambling from its commitments when it first signed up to the WTO. According to Mark Mandel, Antigua’s main lawyer in the WTO case against the US, there were extensive debates about gambling when the WTO was being set up, and over a dozen countries excluded gambling from their commitments. The US was not one of them.