Simon Lester

This is from Inside US Trade: During a meeting with their U.S. counterparts this week, Canadian negotiators will pitch the elimination of the deal’s investor-state dispute settlement provision -- and the U.S. is expected to agree to that proposal, allowing for what private-sector and congressional sources called

The revised text is out, courtesy of New Zealand and Canada (and perhaps others -- I didn't check all of them). The first thing to note is that we all -- that is, everyone who responded to my tweet about this -- have agreed to keep calling it

I recently participated in an ICTSD event on RTA disputes, and my assignment was to look at how compliance went in cases in which there was a panel ruling. I did my best to dig up information, but it's hard to find it for many cases. Luckily, there

Does international investment law sometimes make governments pay compensation when they rethink policy? As a sequel to this post, here is an excerpt from Gary Born's dissent in the Wirtgen & JSW Solar arbitration (the Investment Arbitration Reporter summary of this case, which involved government subsidies to the

USTR has some job openings: Director for Innovation and Intellectual Property (Attorney) Trade Attorney USTR Intern Position - Summer 2018

This is from law professor Weihuan Zhou: The China – EU (US) fight over issues relating to China’s market economy status is attracting growing prominence. In the ongoing EU – Price Comparison Methodologies (DS516) dispute, the WTO panel will need to determine, amongst other issues, whether Section 15 of China’s

DSU Article 22.2 allows WTO complainants, in the event of non-compliance, to "request authorization from the DSB to suspend the application to the Member concerned of concessions or other obligations under the covered agreements." How explicit must they be in this suspension request? Do they have to

This is from Ambassador Lighthizer's statement at the NAFTA press conference today: Finally, I would like to refer, because I think it fits into this context to an unprecedented trade action that Canada brought against the United States very recently. It constitutes a massive attack on all of

The 6th round of the NAFTA talks wrapped up today, and my impression of the closing statements was that everyone was relatively positive, much more so than after the 4th round anyway. I wanted to highlight one thing from Ambassador Lighthizer's statement: Free trade agreements are essentially grants

This is from The Canadian Press: Canada and Mexico are applying pressure on the United States to decide whether it wants to be part of NAFTA’s investor-state dispute mechanism, threatening to sideline it unless it commits to participating fully. Multiple sources say the conversation came to a head this