Simon Lester

This is from the FT: Finance ministers from the world’s biggest economies have dropped pledges to renounce protectionism in a meeting marked by tension over trade between the US and others including China. G20 finance ministers meeting in the German resort town of Baden-Baden noted the importance of trade

This is also from Todd Tucker's report: ... The U.S. trade deficits with Mexico and China went up after trade deals were finalized with both countries. Summarizing the research that uses such deficit-based measures (and attempting to control for trade displacement he believes would have happened anyway as

This is from the Todd Tucker progressive trade policy vision that I mentioned in the last post: ... The benefits of international cooperation on fighting tax evasion, monopoly power, unstable financial markets, climate change, and macroeconomic imbalances from misaligned currencies far outstrip even the most optimistic projections for agreements like the

Progressives might disagree among themselves on what they want out of trade policy, but the vision of one particular progressive, long-time friend of this blog Todd Tucker, is here. First, let me say that I love the title of his report: "The Sustainable Equitable Trade Doctrine: Building Progressive International

The UK Parliament International Trade Committee has issued a report on "UK Trade Options Beyond 2019."  There are lots of interesting items in there. Here is the section on dispute rules in a UK-EU FTA: Dispute resolution 95.A key consideration regarding the terms of a UK-EU FTA

This is from CTV: The [Canadian] federal government is launching consultations on a potential free trade agreement with China. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang announced the beginning of exploratory discussions in September. Now the government says it is seeking input from individuals, businesses, civil society organizations,

Here is former UN Ambassador John Bolton writing about the DSU in the WSJ: Agreed to during the Uruguay Round of world trade talks in 1994, the DSU has had some successes. But it is often criticized for failing to deter violations of the WTO’s substantive trade provisions and

If you are looking for indications as to how the Trump administration trade policy team might approach changes to WTO dispute settlement, this new report by Terry Stewart and Elizabeth Drake, entitled "How the WTO Undermines U.S. Trade Remedy Enforcement," might be a good place to start.

The FT has a copy here. It is being portrayed as more evidence of the U.S. planning to move away from the WTO, and perhaps it is, but to be honest the language is not as radical as I expected.  Yes, there are mentions of "sovereignty" and

This is from the FT: The Trump administration is exploring alternatives to taking trade disputes to the World Trade Organisation in what would amount to the first step away from a system that Washington helped to establish more than two decades ago. Incoming officials have asked the US Trade Representative’