Simon Lester

The tobacco carveout for TPP ISDS leads me to another question that has been bothering me: What happens to NAFTA Chapter 11 after TPP?  (Same question applies to other U.S. FTAs that have investment chapters with ISDS.)  Does TPP ISDS supersede NAFTA Chapter 11 entirely, so that any future

In the last post, I wondered why the TPP tobacco carveout from ISDS would let e-cigarettes off the hook.  But maybe it won't.  Somebody pointed out to me that nicotine is usually extracted from tobacco, and that the language of the carveout may actually be broad enough to

Here's another paragraph from the Inside US Trade article on the tobacco ISDS carveout that I mentioned the other day: The U.S. has proposed to define a tobacco control measure as one relating to the production or consumption of manufactured tobacco products, their distribution, labeling, packaging, wrapping,

From the NY Times: The United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations on Monday agreed to the largest regional trade accord in history, a potentially precedent-setting model for global commerce and worker standards that would tie together 40 percent of the world’s economy, from Canada and Chile to

From Inside US Trade: The United States and Australia have jointly developed a text proposal on the exclusivity term for biologics medicines and overnight began showing it to other Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) countries in an effort to build support, in a move that is raising optimism that negotiators can reach

Inside US Trade reports from the TPP negotiations: The U.S. proposal on tobacco tabled here would give countries the option to prevent tobacco companies from challenging tobacco control measures under investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), using a concept that already exists under the U.S. investment model called "denial

Todd Tucker has been blogging about the recently circulated Argentina - Financial Services (DS453) panel report (see here, here, and here), based on a claim by Panama against Argentina, and he has some good general background and some exploration of the nuances. There's lots to talk about in

This is from the Strong Language blog, which bills itself as "A sweary blog about swearing" (in the excerpt below, I've deleted the controversial words from this family friendly blog!): Under the federal trademark statute, trademarks that are found to be “scandalous” can’t be registered

This is the intro of a new article by history professor Ben Coates, in the Journal of American History: On July 28, 1904, the gunboat Bolívar arrived in Guanoco, in northeastern Venezuela. It carried a contingent of Venezuelan soldiers with instructions to seize the property of the New York and

Maybe trade negotiators could negotiate about this: State and municipal governments in the United States each year offer some $80 billion in tax breaks and other subsidies to encourage large companies to do what they would do regardless — invest in new plants, office space and equipment in the hopes of