Simon Lester

As everyone has no doubt heard by now, the U.S., Japan and the EU recently won a big victory over China in the Rare Earths case at the WTO. The WTO panel ruled that various Chinese export duties and quotas violated WTO obligations and were not justified by any

This is from economics reporter Peter Martin: And now Australia has said no to an ISDS in its free trade agreement with Japan. The agreement will be better and simpler because of it. Some details of the agreement are here, but the full text is not out yet. Australia is

The European Parliament's Committee on International Trade held a workshop on ISDS on Tuesday. I had a little trouble viewing the recorded video, but try these links. I was particularly interested in the response given by Rupert Schlegelmilch of the European Commission to the question, "Where is

A guest post by Aik Hoe Lim and Bart De Meester [1]: Recent disputes concerning Article 2.2 of the TBT Agreement – in particular US - Tuna II (Mexico) and US - Clove Cigarettes – have focused attention on measures that, even when not discriminatory, may constitute barriers to trade in

From the FT last week: Mr De Gucht said the negotiations to create what would be the world’s biggest free trade zone would be at risk if an investor-state dispute settlement mechanism was not part of the proposed deal. “I doubt it,” he responded when asked if the pact

From a ruling last week on the U.S. COOL measure by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit: What then are the government interests here? AMI argues that the rule merely satisfies consumers’ curiosity. But we can see non-frivolous values advanced by the information. Obviously it

I still don't know much about the Trade Facilitation Agreement, but law prof Antonia Eliason does, and she has written an article about it.  Here's the abstract: This article provides a first analysis of the new WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, tracing it from its origins in

From the MJIEL: ASSOCIATE EDITOR/S FOR THE MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC LAW (MJIEL) The MJIEL is looking for Associate Editor/s with a proven and distinguished record in research in the field of International Economic Law to work with Professor Asif H Qureshi and Dr Xuan Gao and

The China - Rare Earths WTO panel report was circulated yesterday. What's jumping out at me in the report are some really interesting systemic issues. First, there is some good stuff about the role of precedent, and when a WTO panel might depart from prior Appellate Body reasoning