Simon Lester

From today's Presidential Policy Directive on Signals Intelligence Activities: (c) The collection of foreign private commercial information or trade secrets is authorized only to protect the national security of the United States or its partners and allies. It is not an authorized foreign intelligence or counterintelligence purpose to

If I had been blogging in 1990, I probably would have commented on this statement by the Thailand - Cigarettes GATT panel: 73. The Panel then defined the issues which arose under this provision. In agreement with the parties to the dispute and the expert from the WHO, the Panel

The other day I wondered about whether there was a middle ground to be found on currency issues, trying to balance out the views of certain members of Congress and U.S. trading partners.  As reported by the NY Times, the same issue may arise for the environment: The Obama

I posted recently about what "regulatory trade barriers," a term that gets thrown around a lot in the context of the TTIP negotiations, might mean.  Trade lawyer Ted Posner offered up a comment, and I wanted to respond to a couple of his points.  (And by the way,

Here's the relevant text: (11) CURRENCY.—The principal negotiating objective of the United States with respect to currency practices is that parties to a trade agreement with the United States avoid manipulating exchange rates in order to prevent effective balance of payments adjustment or to gain an unfair

From an article by law profs Susy Frankel and Daniel Gervais: The Australian plain packaging measures go practically as far as one can go in terms of imposing encumbrances on trademark owners. If, as just mentioned, the rights and interests of trademark owners are best seen as a continuum, then

This is from the TPA bill introduced in Congress today: SEC. 8. SOVEREIGNTY. (a) UNITED STATES LAW TO PREVAIL IN EVENT OF CONFLICT.—No provision of any trade agreement entered into under section 3(b), nor the application of any such provision to any person or circumstance, that is inconsistent

Here is the "remedy" portion of a proposal from the American Automotive Policy Council for currency manipulation provisions in the TPP: If a TPP member is found to have breached its currency commitments under the agreement, other TPP members shall be entitled to suspend the tariff benefits of

As mentioned before the holidays, we will be holding a policy forum at Cato on the Eli Lilly NAFTA Chapter 11 case, on January 16.  You can register to attend here: http://www.cato.org/events/patents-public-health-international-law-eli-lilly-nafta-chapter-11-case Henning explained the case about a year ago, here.  In a nutshell, the

From the Washington Post: Members of Boeing’s machinists union on Friday voted by a slim margin to accept the company’s proposal of a long-term contract that will guarantee construction of a new long-range wide-body aircraft in the Puget Sound region, in exchange for significant wage and retirement benefit