International Economic Law and Policy Blog

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Rob Howse

Iran: Sanctions and Sequencing, Diplomacy and Distrust

Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei has expressed the view today that all sanctions must be limited simultaneously with the signing or conclusion of a final agreement This seems in tension certainly with the US fact sheet on the parameters arrived at in Lausanne, as well as possibly with Iran&

A Response to Henry Kissinger and George Shultz on the Iran Deal

In the Wall Street Journal, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former Secretaries of State, have damned with faint praise the strategy of diplomacy pursued by the Obama Administration with respect to Iran and its nuclear program. Their bottom line: unless there is an effective grand strategy to address Iran'

Sanctions, Reactors, and Legal Effects: Inventing "Contradictions" Between Washington and Tehran on the JCPOA

A recent story in the New York Post http://bit.ly/1NK55m1 is making a rather sensational claim that Iran's official statement in Farsi about the deal last week on sanctions and nuclear proliferation contradicts in essential respects the State Department's fact sheet, which I discussed

The Logic of Economic Sanctions and the Design of the Deal:Why the President not Congress has the Upper Hand on Iran

Last month, Tom Cotton and 46 of his colleagues in the Senate tried to run interference with the Administration's nuclear negotiations with Iran, addressing a letter to the leadership in Tehran that suggested Congress could destroy any legal certainty in an eventual deal with Iran, if not reversing

The Bilcon Decision: The Environment, Local Politics and the Rule of Law

Simon Lester already blogged this morning about the NAFTA investor-state award in Bilcon v. Canada, focusing on one particular issue concerning National Treatment. The award is interesting on a number of fronts, including the issue of the minimum standard of treatment (Fair and Equitable Treatment) in relation to customary international

Why the India-US WTO Breakthrough-and the Trade Facilitation Agreement-Really Do Matter

Many of you will have seen Alan Beattie's piece on one of the FT blogs suggesting that what happened last week isn't a victory but disguises a defeat, and that the TFA is really trivial.http://on.ft.com/1BQqAB1 I'm guest blogging this

The US India WTO Deal:The Need for Clarity on Next Steps

It seems the full text of the WTO deal between India and the US is not yet publicly available. In these circumstances, it is difficult to clear up confusion about what the next steps are toward getting Bali back on track. As I mentioned in my previous post, some news

How India & the US Broke the WTO impasse-Without Either Making Any Concessions

India's blockage of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, even after having won a hard-fought battle for a peace clause on food security at Bali, has not only threatened further progress toward renewing the World Trade Organization; it is also a story replete with political posturing on many sides,

Mesa Power v. Canada NAFTA investor-state arbitration: public viewing of the hearing

Many of you will be familiar with Mesa Power as the NAFTA case that concerns the local content requirements in Ontario's feed-in-tariff (FIT) programme for renewably generated electricity, which were found to violate WTO rules in the recent Canada-Renewable Energy rulings. The NAFTA claim raises far broader issues

Where to publish in international law-a not entirely unbiased pitch for the London Review

My co-authors and I are close to signing off on our manuscript analyzing the WTO Seal Products rulings. Coming from the very happy Howse/Langille experience with the Yale Journal of International Law, I think we will again submit to the US student-edited law journals-also the nature of the piece.