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Simon Lester

A New Structure for Appellate Body Reports

The Appellate Body has announced a change related to how it approaches summaries of parties' arguments in its reports: The Appellate Body intends to continue the practice of asking participants in appeals to submit executive summaries of their written submissions. The deadlines for filing such summaries will also remain

More on a TPP Secretariat

Continuing with the theme of issues I think are interesting, but few people are talking about, let me raise again the question of whether there should be a TPP Secretariat. This is from Deborah Elms: The TPP requires a robust Secretariat to ensure the long-term health and success of this

More on That Interesting Debate

In the comments on that last post, Marc Benitah asked why I thought this was such an important debate. I had been planning to explain this anyway, so I'm glad he asked. I think the distinction between "protectionism" and "terms of trade manipulation," as

The Most Interesting Trade Debate You've Probably Never Heard Of

There's a great debate that has been going on slowly and sporadically, over a period of years, about the purpose of trade agreements. On one side are Don Regan of Michigan Law School and economist Bill Ethier; on the other side are economists Kyle Bagwell and Rob Staiger,

State Subsidy Competition Is Bad

From a new paper by economist Ralph Ossa: U.S. cities, counties, and states spend substantial resources on subsidies trying to attract firms. According to a New York Times database which I describe in detail later on, expenditures for such subsidies range from $33.4 million per year in Nevada

Fifteen Fully Funded PhD Positions in Dispute Resolution in International Law

From the International Max Planck Research School for Successful Dispute Resolution in International Law: Fifteen fully funded PhD positions in International Law, starting in 2015 and 2016, are currently open at the International Max Planck Research School for Successful Dispute Resolution (IMPRS-SDR), a doctoral school established in Heidelberg (Germany) and

Worthwhile Canadian Appellate Decision

For years now, I've been fascinated by Canada's Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT), which has a domestic trade dispute system that looks a lot like the dispute systems in international trade agreements. I've never been able to generate much excitement from others about the

Is There Anything That Can Be Done About Anti-Dumping?

In my view, there's not enough talk about anti-dumping these days. Most people seem to have accepted the status quo, and all the big mega-regional trade talks just ignore it. So, I'm always happy to see that some people still care about the issue. This program

Interview With a TPP Critic

Having observed critics of trade agreements for around 20 years now, I've often wondered about their precise views. It's clear they don't like trade agreements, but what exactly do they want to see from the trade regime? Some of them are almost certainly protectionists,

What if GSP Tariff Preferences Lead to Human Rights Violations?

When I think of GSP conditionality, normally I think of conditions by which the GSP program is designed to change an existing situation in a recipient country (e.g., labor rights violations). But what if the program itself leads to the problem situation? From Sara Núñez Évora, this is a