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Simon Lester

The Role of Past Determinations in U.S. DOC Proceedings

In the U.S. - Ripe Olives from Spain, Article 21.5 panel report circulated last week, I was struck by the discussion of the role of previous Commerce Department determinations in deciding future cases, and the obvious parallels to how the ongoing DS reform negotiation are talking about the

IELP Blog Emails

The technical problems on the blog just keep coming. After recently dealing with the RSS feed, I noticed that the emails with recent blog posts (for those of you who read the blog that way) weren't sending properly. I decided to give up on feedblitz as the sender

The AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) governments have been working on the issue of international rules on digital trade. There was recently a leak of a draft Digital Trade Protocol to the AfCFTA Agreement (an earlier draft is here). In this post, I'm going to look at

Guest Post: MC13: Is It the Last Chance To Save The WTO?

This is a guest post by several people from the Research Chair on New Challenges of Economic Globalization, Laval University, Quebec City, Canada: Antoine Comont, Ph.D. Researcher; Carla Gomez, Ph.D. Researcher; Van Anh Ly, Ph.D., Deputy Director of the Research Chair on New Challenges of Economic Globalization;

Katherine Tai on Digital Trade

At a CFR event last week, U.S. Trade Rep. Katherine Tai said some things about digital trade. Normally for these things, I provide a quote and then react to it afterwards, but the quotes here are so long that I'm going to put my thoughts up front.

WTO Dispute Settlement Reform Proposals on the Role of Precedent

The WTO has now posted a document with the DS reform text that will be discussed at the upcoming Ministerial Conference (see the Consolidated Text of a Ministerial Decision on Dispute Settlement in Annex 1 of the document). There's a lot in there, although nothing on appeal/review

Two Reasons for a Two-Tier WTO Dispute Settlement System

As part of the WTO DS reform exercise, USTR officials have mentioned the importance of having WTO Members explain what they see as their interests in the system. In a recent communication to the WTO, Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Indonesia and South Africa have weighed in on their interest in a

Katherine Tai on Tariffs (Again)

At a CFR event on Monday, U.S. Trade Rep. Katherine Tai said some things about tariffs. I know, I just did a blog post about Katherine Tai talking about tariffs! But she said some more things, and I have more to say in response. There were two sets of

What Chinese Behavior is Outside the Scope of WTO Rules?

At a House Ways and Means Committee trade hearing last week, Congressman Adrian Smith (R-NE) said this: Many countries, especially China, ... engage in predatory, unfair, and anti-free market behavior outside the scope of the WTO rules. While the rules could of course be tightened, it's important to note

Reinterpreting WTO Non-Discrimination Obligations

The excellent and interesting Villars Framework 2.0, which was recently released, expresses concern that "[j]udicial balancing tests may leave states uncertain as to which sustainability standards are permitted and which are not," and offers the following reform proposal related to PPM-based standards: This problem of uncertainty,