Simon Lester

Last week, I was at the WTO public forum, talking about online higher education.  One of the themes was that putting education online makes education tradable like it never has been before. I had been assuming that online education would fall within the GATS as trade in services, but someone

Todd Weiler has written a fascinating book on international investment law.  He has done extensive research on negotiating history, which I always enjoy.  It's the kind of book where you read each footnote carefully, because there are important nuggets of information in each one. As much as I

From USTR: United States Trade Representative Michael Froman and Mongolia's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Luvsanvandan Bold, today signed an Agreement on Transparency in Matters Related to International Trade and Investment between the United States of America and Mongolia at a ceremony in New York. The U.S.-Mongolia

From USA Today: China's richest man plans to spend 50 billion yuan ($8.2 billion) to build the country's version of Hollywood in the northeastern city of Qingdao. In a glitzy, star-studded red carpet event on Sunday, Wang Jianlin said his company, Dalian Wanda Group, will

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.