Simon Lester

From a post at the EFILA blog: An investor in a Host State court is automatically an alien, advancing a claim in a foreign court automatically places the investor at a disadvantage of itself. This seems like an assertion that could be studied empirically. How are aliens treated in domestic

There's an interesting NAFTA Chapter 11 claim going on related to wind energy. As Lise Johnson explains in Investment Arbitration Reporter: The NAFTA Chapter 11 case relates to an offshore wind energy project being developed as part of Ontario’s Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) Program. Windstream claims to

From the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade and investment agreement was formally signed by 12 ministers in Auckland on February 4. Independent Senator Nick Xenophon spoke in the Senate about the agreement. "It has been put to me that, if a government introduced poker machine legislation

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 8,

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 focused

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

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