Simon Lester

Today, the Canadian Supreme Court decided the Comeau case, involving provincial barriers on trade in beer. This decision could have created a Canadian "single market" (to borrow a phrase), but the justices decided on a narrower approach. For anyone who follows WTO jurisprudence or debates about policy space/

The legal texts of the EU - Singapore Free Trade Agreement and the EU - Singapore Investment Protection Agreement are now available here. A European Commission press release related to these agreements, and also covering the EU - Japan Economic Partnership Agreement, explains the next steps as follows: The Commission

China already made the argument that the Section 232 steel/aluminum tariffs are actually safeguard measures, both in a Safeguards Agreement consultations request and a DSU consultations request. Now both the EU and India have filed Safeguards Agreement consultations requests based on this same argument. The EU says the following

This is from Krzysztof Pelc's review of Dani Rodrik's new book: In the case of trade, one such wrinkle, long overlooked, comes from economic models’ focus on the “average citizen.” And while trade agreements may indeed be beneficial to the “average Canadian,” no such animal exists

Is it worth responding to things President Trump says about trade? I'm not sure, but I'm doing it anyway, very briefly. The transcript of his remarks from today is here. Feel free to add your own comments. Trump: THE PRESIDENT:  As you are all aware, China

This is the legal basis of China's WTO complaint against the U.S. Section 232 tariffs, filed on April 5: The measures at issue, operating separately or together, appear to be inconsistent with the United States' obligations under: * Articles XIX:1(a), XIX:2 of the GATT

This is from Kathleen Claussen: Select videos from the 112th Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law (ASIL) held last week in Washington, DC are now available on the ASIL website (https://www.asil.org/resources/video/2018-annual-meeting).  These include video from a session on the future of

China's consultations request on the U.S. Section 301 tariffs is here. This is the key part: On 22 March 2018, the United States published related documents of the Section 301 investigations against China. On 3 April, the United State published a list of products of Chinese origin,

Here is the U.S. response to China's decision to deem the Section 232 tariffs a safeguard measure and to impose tariffs pursuant to provisions of the Safeguards Agreement: The United States has received China's requests for consultations under Article 12.3 of the Agreement on

I have been puzzling over what is happening with the safeguards issues related to the U.S. steel/aluminum "national security" tariffs (and as I was drafting this post, Brett Williams raised the same issue in a comment here). This is what I see so far. Safeguards Agreement