Simon Lester

From the Guardian: Australia has finished negotiations for a free trade agreement with South Korea, paving the way to reduce and scrap tariffs on key exports, the prime minister says. The proposed deal includes a controversial investor-state dispute settlement mechanism – but the government says it has secured safeguards to ensure

From the Washington Post: The British government has taken the unusual step of filing a brief in a Texas federal court in support of BP in its quest to get the Environmental Protection Agency to lift a ban on the British oil firm’s ability to bid for federal contracts,

I don't know what's going to happen at the Bali Ministerial this week. I'm not very good at predicting these things.  But whatever happens, I probably won't be all that excited one way or the other.  That's because the issues

Here's more from that Commission document mentioned in the last post: In order to discourage 'long shot' and frivolous claims by investors, the EU has agreed provisions to enable tribunals to dismiss such claims quickly and also to require that all litigation costs are borne by

From a document just released by the European Commission, entitled "A new start for investment and investment protection": 4. What is the EU doing to improve investment protection rules? The Commission’s aim is to bring improvements on two fronts (1) to clarify and improve investment protection rules

Here is the entirety of the WTO Seal Products panel's GATT Article III:4 analysis: 7.4.3.2 Analysis by the Panel 7.604. Article III:4 of the GATT 1994 provides that: The products of the territory of any Member imported into the territory of any

The Peter Van den Bossche/Werner Zdouc WTO law textbook says this: A requirement that imported furniture is fire-resistant, while no such requirement exists for domestically produced furniture, would constitute a violation of the national treatment obligation set out in Article 2.1 of the TBT Agreement. That's

Some recent news headlines about the tea party and trade: "Hill tea party’s next target: Barack Obama’s trade agenda" "Tea Party Joins Liberals in Push Against Fast-Tracked Trade" An excerpt: Tea party Republicans insist they’re in favor of free trade. They just don’

Thanks to WikiLeaks:  http://wikileaks.org/tpp/  (Also thanks to whoever gave it to WikiLeaks.) So what's in it?  Way too much to discuss quickly, especially since I just returned last night from a conference over in Prague.  But any of you IP experts out there should feel

Marc mentioned it on this blog the other day.  The consultations request is here.  Some key parts: - The Facts 6. The Atlanto Scandian herring is shared between the respective exclusive zones of five coastal States, namely the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norway, the Russian Federation, and, to some extent, the