Simon Lester

The 10th Annual Academy of WTO Law & Policy will be held at Georgetown Law Center, November 16-20, 2015. Here's an overview: The Academy is an intensive professional development program on the law and policy of the World Trade Organization (WTO).  It examines the legal obligations and

At least based on what she has heard about it so far.  From Vox: In a major blow to President Obama's trade agenda, Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton has come out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In an interview with PBS's Judy Woodruff, Clinton stressed that

When it became clear there would be a tobacco carveout from TPP ISDS, I rushed out this critique: I'd be happy to carve ISDS out of trade agreements (or just apply the tobacco carveout proposal to all measures!), but I can't understand why tobacco would be

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

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

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

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