Simon Lester

A couple weeks ago, I suggested that it was possible the Trump administration had already made up its mind on the Section 232 investigations, and would almost certainly find that steel and aluminum imports have impaired national security, giving the President the authority to impose trade restrictions in response (the

Last month, I blogged about a press conference by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, in which, among other things, he seemed to criticize the MFN clause as a barrier to trade liberalization. I explained (briefly) there why I thought this criticism was misguided. Chad Bown and Alan Sykes subsequently wrote a

This is from Inside US Trade: U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, at his first public appearance here during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation trade ministers meeting, said the U.S. defending its own market against unfair trade practices should not be confused with protectionism -- the definition of which, he

You may have thought the much discussed U.S. border adjustment tax proposal was dead, as not much has been said about it recently, but the Washington Post reports on a Congressional hearing yesterday: Much of corporate America is in agreement that it would like to see a sweeping overhaul

This announcement is from Ming Du at the Centre for Chinese Law & Social - Legal Studies of Surrey University: On 31st May 2017, the Centre for Chinese Law & Social - Legal Studies of Surrey University, together with the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, will hold an

Instead of the U.S. - China trade war that may have seemed like it was coming, we are seeing positive U.S. - China trade relations so far.  The Trump administration and China recently worked out a deal on a few small trade issues.  Here are two items to

This is from an Economist interview with Donald Trump: It sounds like you’re imagining a pretty big renegotiation of NAFTA. What would a fair NAFTA look like? Big isn’t a good enough word. Massive. Huge? It’s got to be. It’s got to be. What would it

Former President Jimmy Carter weighed in on the U.S.-Canada lumber dispute yesterday.  He noted that "[t]imber sales are a major source of income for my own family," and he thus agreed with the U.S. industry that Canada is behaving unfairly, as the provinces charge

The Trump administration has recently announced Section 232 investigations into whether steel and aluminum imports impair national security.  A key issue will be whether these products are "being imported into the United States in such quantities or under such circumstances as to threaten to impair the national security."

Bloomberg reports: The World Trade Organization upheld Australia’s right to impose plain-package label restrictions on the sale of tobacco products, dealing a blow to the cigarette industry, according to two people close to the situation. A WTO dispute-settlement panel backed Australia’s argument that the rules it set in