Marc Benitah

Joan Robinson, criticizing false rigor, was fond of saying that "an elephant is hard to define but easy to recognize! " I wonder if this metaphor applies to the issue of "unfairness" in international trade. I say that because I have noticed that many recent posts on

The late Raymond Vernon was fond of saying that Multinational Corporations are everywhere except in economic textbooks. In the same vein, I would say that currency manipulation is everywhere the talk of the day except in international trade law which is strangely silent on this issue. In an interesting article,

In any potential legal case against the Chinese Yuan, the measure of its alleged undervaluation is critical because of the necessary demonstration of the benefit criterion in a subsidy context. Moreover, in a CVD context, the countervailing duty must not be superior to the benefit inherent in the subsidy. In

Even if there have been few observations on the Biotech ruling from the perspective of the WTO-MEAs (Multilateral Environmental Agreements) debate, the fact is that the MEAs aspect of this ruling has apparently added something to this debate, although the ruling is puzzling through its ambivalence. 1) On the one

In a recent  previous post, Joel Trachtman suggests that the recent speech by  Pascal Lamy constitutes a "major break" in the trade-environment debate at the WTO. Frankly, I see nothing breaking nor major in this speech. All what Lamy says is that some trade issues negotiated in the

Representatives attending the environmental conference held in Paris past Saturday called for a stronger and more genuine international environmental organization to better deal with the climate challenges. "We hope to establish a new world environmental organization which goes along the lines with the World Health Organization. It should be

The European Union, Australia, Argentina and Brazil have joined Canada in a complaint against the United States over allegedly illegal  subsidies to American corn growers. Although corn is clearly an agricultural product, it is interesting to note the following comment by Clodoaldo Hugueney, Brazilian ambassador to the WTO: "This

According to Bloomberg, considering that the situation has likely worsened recently ''because the yuan has dropped 10 percent on a trade-weighted basis after inflation in the past five years",  Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke urged recently China to allow  the quasi- fixed exchange rate of its

In its recent post on  Posner and the Rule of WTO Law,  Simon Lester underlines that the “mere mention of "policy preferences" seems to set people in the WTO on edge. This stems from a  fact long ago underlined by Hudec that WTO  activity intrudes upon domestic regulatory