Simon Lester

From the AP: France, the land of wine, is planning heavy taxes on beer, and that is not going down well with brewers - even in other nations. President Francois Hollande is pushing through legislation to increase taxes on beer by 160 percent to help fund struggling social programs as

Article :  Considering Development in the Implementation of Panel and Appellate Body Reports, 4(1) TRADE L. & DEV. 150 (2012) [available here] Article Author : Sonia E. Rolland Comment by Cherise M. Valles The issue of “special and differential treatment” for developing countries has long been one of the most difficult

Article :  Considering Development in the Implementation of Panel and Appellate Body Reports, 4(1) TRADE L. & DEV. 150 (2012) [available here] Article Author: Sonia E. Rolland Reviewer: Cherise M. Valles Introduction to Article by (Moderator): Yogesh A. Pai The dialectics of development policy debate at the WTO has thus

The WTO announced today that the European Union and 10 Latin American countries signed an agreement settling the longest-running series of disputes in the history of the multilateral trading system.  DSB chairman Shahid Bashir noted: One positive feature of the disputes is that they have provided a “rich source of

Hope to see some of you blog readers at the following ASIL event: Re-Conceptualizing International Economic Law: Bridging the Public/Private Divide November 29, 2012 ~ December 01, 2012 George Washington University School of Law Stockton Hall, Room 305, 720 20th Street, NW Washington DC 20431 USA   The ASIL International Economic

All of you academics out there are probably familiar with MOOCs by now -- Massive Open Online Courses.  Both the NY Times and Washington Post had articles on them this past week-end, if you need some background. I'm excited about the concept, and I'm in the

Article : Epistemic Contests and Legitimacy of the World Trade Organization: The Brazil – USA Cotton Dispute and Incremental Balancing of Global Interests, 4(1) Trade, L. & Dev. 200 (2012) [available here] Reply by Arthur Daemmrich “I say that the just is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger.” Thrasymachus

Inside U.S. Trade reports here on concerns related to Ukraine's invocation of GATT Article XXVIII to renegotiate many of its tariffs.  The consensus on this issue seems to be that Ukraine is not violating GATT rules (not yet, anyway), and thus a complaint won't help.

This is former AB Member Jim Bacchus, writing in the International Business Times: Ordinarily, for all the reasons [Adam] Smith gave us, subsidies should be avoided, and the matter of sorting out our sources of energy should be left to free trade and to free competition in the marketplace. But

The editors at Bloomberg have a short piece in which they criticize unilateral action against alleged Chinese currency manipulation.  They say we need to take multilateral action instead: ... China does manipulate its currency. By deliberately holding down the exchange rate of the renminbi, it has made its exports artificially cheap