Simon Lester

From remarks by President Obama yesterday: With respect to tobacco, we said very explicitly in this trade deal that any country that regulates tobacco is not somehow violating trade agreements as long as it’s done fairly, as long as they’re not discriminating against American tobacco companies versus their

From the National Interest Analysis of the TPP undertaken by Australia: 5. Australia will also lodge a notification, expressly permitted under Article 29.5, electing to prevent any and all Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) challenges to Australia’s tobacco control measures under the TPP. No word on whether Australia

From PluriCourts: A position as professor (or associate professor) in International Economic Law is announced at PluriCourts. The application deadline is 1 April. Job Description A position as professor (or associate professor) is announced at PluriCourts, a Centre for the Study of the Legitimate Roles of the Judiciary in the

CFR Senior Fellow, and former USTR official, Tom Bollyky makes the case for the tobacco carveout from ISDS in the TPP. Here's an excerpt, but read the whole thing: The Obama Administration has done itself a disservice by not making the basis for the tobacco carve-out clearer.

A couple days ago, I briefly expressed skepticism about the economic estimates being offered up related to the TPP (see also here). Working independently, but with similar ideological priors, here's my Cato colleague Dan Ikenson offering more detailed thoughts: With apologies to my trade economist friends, anyone who

This is from economist, and trade skeptic (to some extent), Dani Rodrik: The bottom line is that neither side’s models generate numbers reliable enough on which a case for or against the TPP can be made. I'm a lot more pro-trade than Dani Rodrik is, but

In India: India's telecoms regulator has blocked Facebook's Free Basics internet service app as part of a ruling in favour of net neutrality. The scheme offered free access to a limited number of websites. However, it was opposed by supporters of net neutrality who argued that

In my daily trade news reading, I was surprised to come across this sentence: [New Zealand] has not lost a dispute at the WTO in 20 years. Can that really be true, I thought?  Luckily, there's a web site that tracks these things, so I looked up the

From TradeLab: POSITION VACANT Project Coordinator, TradeLab – International Economic Law (Trade and/or Investment) Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, together with the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, the University of Arizona, Qatar University School of Law and a number of international partners, is

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