Rob Howse

Here also I have no really strong theory (and no leads this time).  Though I wonder how close Blanco and Jonathan Fried became when they were negotiating NAFTA.  Each was the chief negotiator for their own country-strong loyalties can be cemented that way, especially when the talks are successful.  I

One of the issues I didn't address in my previous posts on the irregularities alleged by Kenya in the WTO DG selection process, is why the EU would want to subvert the process to keep African candidates out of the race.  The reason is that I didn'

An examination of the relevant WTO document http://bit.ly/16SQhPy shows that Kenya has a pretty clear-cut case that procedures were violated when the EU was allowed to express five preferences in the first round of DG selection, such that it could effectively ensure the elimination of African candidates

According to this news article http://bit.ly/14zrBNB, Kenya has sent a strongly worded letter to the Chair of the WTO General Council alleging specific irregularities in the round one selection process that resulted in both African candidates, including the impressive Kenyan Amina Mohamed, being eliminated from the race.

At the beginning of ths month, following the release of a study by the IMF showing the severely negative climate impact of fossil fuel subsidies, I published an oped in the Toronto Globe and Mail lamenting that "despite the obvious importance both to climate change and competitiveness issues, the

Thanks to the  efforts of leading WTO scholars and EUI professors Bernard Hoekman and Petros Mavroidis, today we have a better view of the perspectives and positions of seven of the nine candidates for Director-General of the WTO.  Their e-book Race for the WTP Director General job:  Seven candidates speak,

In a recent on-line article, http://www.stewartlaw.com/stewartandstewart/TradeFlows/tabid/127/language/en-US/Default.aspx?udt_583_param_detail=1151, Stewart, Drake and Menaker suggest that the reasoning of the AB on the chapeau in Brazil-Tyres could make it difficult to justify the EU seal products ban, given

I am now starting to tweet regularly on international economic law (and related issues).  You can follow @howserob If you are also tweeting, please let me know so I can follow also. best, Rob

Beginning with this post, a few further observations on the hearings, as I review my notes on the plane home. One of the mantras repeated by the complainants is that the indigenous exception is discriminatory because it crates a closed list of countries that can benefit from the exception.  The

Another interesting aspect of day two was that Norway began to break ranks with Canada, claiming that the practices depicted in the EU's videos of the Canadian Hunt would not be tolerated by Norway, what the hunt is under constant inspection.  But the EU pointed to the limited