Simon Lester

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

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

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

Here's the list of Americans on the recently updated indicative list of WTO panelists: BROWN-WEISS, Ms. Edith CONNELLY, Mr. Warren GANTZ, Mr. David A. GORDON, Mr. Michael Wallace HODGSON, Ms. Mélida KASSINGER, Mr. Theodore W. KHO, Mr. Stephen LAYTON, Mr. Duane LICHTENSTEIN, Ms. Cynthia Crawford McGINNIS, Mr.

The conference formerly known as the BIICL WTO conference, and this year organized by BIICL, the IIEL, the Graduate Institute and SIEL, will be held in Geneva this year, on June 10-11. The call for papers is here. Here are the topics being covered: • 1. LEGAL INNOVATION IN TPP

She has three proposals: First, we must continue to work on outstanding Doha issues, particularly those issues that can only be solved by the WTO and not in bilateral or regional agreements. One such issue is subsidies. We cannot approach them in the same way that we have in the

This is from Congressman Sandy Levin's testimony to the ITC on the impact of the TPP on the U.S. economy: We all recognize that trade can be beneficial. The issue is not whether Members of Congress such as myself could pass an Econ 101 class, as President

This is from Inside US Trade: The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a U.S. anti-smoking group, is actively lobbying Democratic members of Congress hoping to sway them in support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) based on the argument that the agreement's tobacco carveout is a

Have you been following the U.S. presidential primaries? I don't recommend it. They are kind of awful. However, last night's GOP debate did have a bright spot or two related to trade. After the usual bluster by one candidate, and some mangled nonsense from another,

This is from Indian trade lawyer R.V. Anuradha: It is in this context that the Nairobi Ministerial Declaration’s admission of dissonance in the WTO membership on the ‘Doha mandate’ assumes greater significance. This dissonance is presented in the text of the declaration which records what “many Members” versus