Simon Lester

Some cold water from Senator Orrin Hatch: Long story short, Mr. President, no one should be under any illusions that, because the TPP is being signed today, an up or down vote on the agreement is imminent or that our oversight responsibilities are at an end. If history has taught

This is from a Peterson Institute working paper, by Peter Petri and Michael Plummer, that estimates the economic effects of the TPP: The bottom half of the table shows NTBs, represented as tariffs that would have had the same protective effect (tariff equivalents). NTBs include quotas in agriculture and energy,

A few weeks ago, I noted that the EU - Viet Nam FTA would include the EU's proposed new Investment Court System (ICS). The text of that FTA has just been released, so now everyone can see what the big deal is. The ICS part is in Chapter

On Friday, ICTSD and WTI Adivisors hosted an excellent discussion of the US - Tuna II WTO Appellate Body report, with Lorand Bartels, Joel Trachtman, Iain Sandford, David Agnew, and Matthew Owens as speakers. You can view the recording here. Via twitter, I asked the following questions: "The AB

From a speech by EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom: I'd like to talk about three benefits in particular but the theme of today's event is the precautionary principle, so let me say a few words about that first. * As a starting point, it's good

From the WTO: The DSB agreed with the Chairman’s proposal for appointment/reappointment of Appellate Body members. In particular, it agreed to launch a selection process for one position in the Appellate Body to replace Ms Yuejiao Zhang, whose second four-year term of office will expire on 31 May

From Politico: “I pushed very, very, very aggressively for that tobacco provision to be part of this,” Wyden told POLITICO about the carveout that protects tobacco control-related policies from being challenged in investor-state cases. “I have watched the tobacco companies over the years particularly focus on global markets where they

The Obama administration's rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline was controversial; opinions on TransCanada's NAFTA Chapter 11 claim vary. Now Donald Trump has weighed in. You can probably imagine the result. This is from the Toronto Star: Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump says he would reject

This is from a new paper by Gus Van Harten and Pavel Malysheuski: The sociological legitimacy of investment treaty arbitration, commonly known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), appears to depend in part on an expectation that it benefits smaller businesses, not just large multinationals and the super wealthy. Proposed trade

This is a fascinating article on ISDS from CBC news, explaining the tension between the EU and U.S. positions on ISDS, and how Canada is caught in the middle: European Union officials quietly approached Justin Trudeau's new government last fall with a request to revisit the controversial