What's the difference in assessing damages as between investor-state dispute settlement and state-to-state trade disputes? Well, with state-to-state, enforcing a successful complaint often revolves around the fuzzy concept of nullification or impairment, and it's up to the aggrieved state to come up with its own trade retaliation, which then gets challenged by the responding party, and in some cases eventually gets applied, to varying degrees of success. Kind of a mess.
By contrast, with investor-state, it's a nice, clean, round number. In the Corn Products International NAFTA Chapter 11 case, that number was $58.386 million:
In an award rendered August 18, 2009, the Tribunal awarded damages to the Company in the amount of $58.386 million, representing lost profits in Mexico as a result of the tax and certain out-of-pocket expenses incurred by CPIngredientes, together with accrued interest.
More on the case, from Luke Peterson, here.
So how about applying this approach at the WTO? With regard to this question, I'll just recall this recent post on an Alan Sykes paper on this issue.
