The Antigua Observer reports on the reaction of Mark Mendel, one of Antigua's lawyers in the WTO gambling dispute, to the Justice Department opinon on online gambling noted the other day:
Reacting yesterday to the US assistant attorney general’s view on the matter, Antigua’s counsel Mark Mendel stated, “I think it is a very, very positive development. Personally, I think this would be a great time to go back to the US government and say, in light of all the things that have happened, now there is no excuse for the US government not to deal with Antigua in a fair way and in a way that allows us to reap the benefits of the victory we got at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). All the excuses they’ve used in the past are now completely gone.”
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Mendel’s interpretation is that it brings a new chapter to the dispute, in that the US “will still say (their) laws prohibit other countries from offering these services to (their) citizens but that can’t stand. If they allow it within their own country then they have to allow it from other countries.”
The expert on finance law and offshore trading added that Antigua & Barbuda’s refusal to allow the US to change their treaty obligations means “this will be a great time for Antigua since we are the beneficiary from that (WTO) ruling … I think this is a great time to go in there and say, ‘now you’ve said this,’ there needs to be room in there for us.”
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With the support of the ruling, Mendel said, “The whole goal of the case was to allow us to offer these services fairly to American consumers and I think what this probably does, if we play our hand right and go about it in the proper way, I think it gives us a chance to have market access which is what we’ve really been wanting all these years.”
He doesn't say it explicitly, but reading between the lines, I think he has in mind that Antigua can now argue for a much bigger "nullification or impairment" level, and this will provide better leverage for inducing the U.S. to comply with the WTO ruling. He seems very hopeful, but I'm not sure how this will all play out. Will there be a proliferation of state-specific online gambling rules? Will the federal government step in? And most importantly, will foreign companies have any opportunity to offer their services?
