Simon Lester

Inside US Trade spells out the different approaches by the EU and U.S. to dealing with regulatory trade barriers in the T-TIP.  The EU: The emphasis of the European Commission is on an approach that would entail mutual recognition and other commitments on existing regulations affecting specific industry sectors

The State Department's Office of the Historian just released some interesting archives as part of the FRUS series, 1977-1980.  Here's someting from a Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs (Bergsten) to Secretary of the Treasury Blumenthal on a GATT for Investment

This time from the Washington Post.  I have some quibbles with it. They say: What to do, however, when free trade and tobacco control seem to be in tension? I'm not sure how "free trade" and "tobacco control" are in tension.  It may be

From this week's Economist: Trading chicken is far more complicated than merely plucking, freezing and dispatching the birds. Chickens don’t get sold whole; exporters have to optimise the “break-up value” of their fowl. The Western palate much prefers white breast meat. Asian consumers prize the more flavoursome

We talked about it here and here.  It now appears to be going forward: U.S. pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly has filed a $500 million international lawsuit against the Canadian government, saying it unfairly shortened the life of patents for its best-selling drugs. The case, filed Thursday under the rules

Todd Tucker, formerly of Global Trade Watch and now studying at Cambridge University, recently did a post about my international investment regime paper.  Thanks to Todd for the publicity!  Read his whole post to get a full flavor; I just wanted to respond to a few specific things he says.

For the Obama administration, from Global Trade Watch: 1. Is the fact that there is no intellectual property chapter text to even negotiate over – even a heavily bracketed text – related to unwavering multi-year opposition to U.S. patent and copyright text proposals? 2. Is the multi-year deadlock over the TPP’

Last week, I mentioned a Cato event on the TPP, on Sep 20 (register here: http://www.cato.org/events/trans-pacific-partnership-race-finish-or-long-slog-ahead).  Well, we also have an event on Oct 2 called "The WTO and the Uncertain Future of Multilateralism."  It features former WTO DG Michael Moore; former WTO

From my friends at Georgetown's Institute of International Economic Law (IIEL), here is some information about their WTO Academy, a week long course that runs from Nov 18 to 22 this year: The Academy is an intensive professional development program on the law and policy of the World

From the folks at MOFCOM, here is a Bidding Announcement for MOFCOM's Law Firm Pool for WTO and RTA work: As required by Government Procurement Law of P.R.China, Ministry of Commerce will establish Candidate List of Law Firms by public bidding. And MOFCOM will select the