International Economic Law and Policy Blog

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Simon Lester

Canada's Submission in the WTO Plain Packaging Dispute

Someone sent me Canada's third party submission in the WTO plain packaging dispute. I checked with a friend who works for the Canadian government, and he said it was fine to post it, so here it is. Here's an excerpt: 42. A finding of a right

Senator Warren on ISDS

From a Washington Post interview with Senator Elizabeth Warren: You can’t envision even in theory a way to structure ISDS that would assuage your concerns? WARREN: Once a group of independent arbiters, whose decisions cannot be appealed, can issue a money judgment of any size, then the ISDS problem

President Obama on ISDS

It's kind of incredible to see a U.S. President talking about an issue as technical as ISDS. Check it out at 10:48 and 19:10 of this video. Putting aside the argument about whether ISDS is good or bad, I think he is making a mistake

Benefit and Market in the AB Feed-In Tariff Report

I'm at the BIICL WTO conference, which has me thinking about a good discussion last year of the Appellate Body's ruling on "benefit" in the Canada - Feed-In Tariff case (see prior posts here and here). As I recall, there were two people on

New ISDS Concepts and Texts

EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström has just announced some new ideas on ISDS, set out in this concept paper. One of the ideas is to move investment arbitration towards being a real "international investment court." Along the same lines, here are some ideas coming from Germany, which also

She Sells Seychelles by the Shore of Lake Geneva

Just for fun, I've been reading the Working Party Report related to the recent Seychelles accession to the WTO (and yes, I am available to come to the Seychelles and give WTO training courses to government officials, in case they are looking for someone). I saw three items

CALL FOR PAPERS - Joint ASIL-ESIL-Max Planck Scholarship Workshop, "The Future of Transatlantic Economic Governance in the Age of the BRICS"

From the ASIL/ESIL/Max Planck: On 11-12 December 2015, the International Economic Law Interest Groups of the American and European Societies of International Law, together with the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, will hold a joint works-in-progress workshop in Heidelberg, Germany. The overarching theme

The TPP and Tobacco: More on the Carveout

Law profs Sergio Puig and Greg Shaffer want to get tobacco out of the TPP: The Obama administration is poised to finalize the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. If Congress passes the current trade promotion authority bill, the TPP will become subject to a simple up or down vote, without possibility

The TPP and GATT Article XXIV

This is from Inside U.S. Trade: the U.S. is negotiating market access [under the TPP] on the basis of bilateral offers, meaning it could end up imposing one tariff on Malaysian dairy products, for instance, and a different tariff for New Zealand. Here's my question: Would

Do WTO Panels Use Judicial Economy to Favor the U.S. and EU as Defendants?

I would not have thought so, but political scientists Ryan Brutger and Julia Morse have data that says so: Abstract: Can international courts ever be independent of state influence? If not, how do courts manage the tension between legal principles and political concerns? We address these questions through an analysis