Simon Lester

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 "

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

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

From the journal Trade, Law and Development: Call for Submissions Special Issue on Trade & Public Health Founded in 2009, the philosophy of Trade, Law and Development has been to generate and sustain a constructive and democratic debate on emergent issues in international economic law and to serve as a

Last week, I said that it wasn't clear to me how the "right to regulate" provision in the European Commission's proposed TTIP ISDS rules would function, or whether it would have any real impact.  Now I see that some people are worried it will

From NPR: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has come out against the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline. ... "I think it is imperative that we look at the Keystone XL pipeline as what I believe it is: a distraction from the important work we have to do to combat climate

This position looks like it could be very appealing to some of you out there: The Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin invites applicants to fill the newly endowed Victor Ramon Davila, Sr. Chair in International Trade Policy, beginning August 2016. The

The European Parliament's trade committee is having a fascinating discussion right now on ISDS: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/ep-live/en/committees/video?event=20150921-1500-COMMITTEE-INTA  I'm watching live; hopefully an archived version will be available later. Someone raised a point about the