Rob Howse

Angela Merkel's Kriegserklärung  against America in its effort to to build consensus for a WTO vaccine waiver will come as no shock to those familiar with Germany's punitive moralism  and gratuitous cruelty in the Greek debt crisis a few years back.   But the chancellor's

"Come, and trip it as ye go, On the light fantastick toe"- John Milton, "Allegro" Yesterday's statement by USTR Ambassador Katherine Tai that the US will support efforts in the WTO for a vaccine waiver is a big deal.  "Massive", "

Yesterday, the journal Global Policy published an essay of mine on the case for rebooting the WTO Appellate Body.  In the article, I propose a range of options for deciding what kind of judges the WTO needs going forward, and addressing some of the more justified criticisms of prior judges,

Around the beginning of World War II, the Jewish-German thinker Walter Benjamin wrote to his friend Gershom Scholem: "“Every line we succeed in publishing today - no matter how uncertain the future to which we entrust it - is a victory wrenched from the powers of darkness.” Benjamin was

Should the Democrats oppose Trump's tariffs with a return to the ideology of free trade (albeit with handouts for globalism's losers)? That's the view of Edward Alden, writing this week in Foreign Policy.  Alden launches a defense of prior Democratic administrations' support for

There's an enormous energy (and optimism) among Democrats, including many new congressional candidates, as we head toward the November midterm elections.  But little media attention has been paid to where the Democratic hopefuls stand on  trade policy. Some months ago a group of Senate Democrats including New York&

Those of you who read the original version of this post, Simon Lester has pointed out that there may be a confusion.  Please disregard, til I come back with something more developed.

Davos has been depressing, a journalist friend emailed me the other day.  And indeed the spectacle of the neoliberal elites congratulating themselves on still ruling the world is a downer. But my ears perked up when President Trump, speaking from Davos, suggested that he might be open to participating in

While a glum consensus has formed that nothing much happened at the WTO MC11 Ministerial Conference, a hardly-noticed announcement on the sidelines of the MC11 Ministerial Conference may have constitutional even transformative implications for the WTO.  Yesterday (Tuesday), together with Alibaba's Jack Ma, and the World Economic Forum,

New Zealand's impressive new Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, is on the record as stating that investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) must not be a part of any future trade agreements signed by New Zealand.  In the case of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP, which is apparently now renamed clumsily CPTPP)