Simon Lester

For technical reasons, I'm posting this on behalf of Rob Howse: I wanted to respond to Simon and further respond to Todd regarding the reaction to US-Cloves.  In earlier posts I have defended the approach of the Appellate Body in proposing a test of whether detrimental effects on

I did two posts a while back on the issue of a U.S. work visa fee.  As the NY Times described it: ... Senator Charles E. Schumer , Democrat of New York, said his staff had come up with an alternative that would not hurt American workers: raising the visa application

Somewhat predictably, Global Trade Watch is going nuts about this decision.  Todd Tucker actually tweeted: "The #WTO paves the way for kids smoking cola ciggies and dying from lung cancer." I understand the role of rhetoric in achieving policy goals, so I don't take most of

Over at Global Trade Watch's blog, Todd Tucker cites the paragraph I quoted in the last post (see the paragraph before as well), and says: the AB ... comes pretty damn close to stating that “the design, architecture, revealing structure, operation, and application of” the FSPTCA was intended to

There are some interesting aspects to the Appellate Body's legal reasoning on "less favorable treatment" in Cloves.  Ultimately, though, the AB's decision to uphold the Panel's finding of violation probably came down to skepticism over the regulatory distinction between clove and menthol

Here's another paragraph I like from the Cloves AB report: 193. Once the imported and domestic like products have been properly identified, Article 2.1 requires a panel dealing with a national treatment claim to compare, on the one hand, the treatment accorded under the technical regulation at

It's out:  http://www.worldtradelaw.net/reports/wtoab/us-clovecigarettes(ab).pdf After a quick skim, it seems that the Appellate Body has upheld the panel's finding of violation of TBT Article 2.1, under modified reasoning. Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to

The U.S. Article 21.5 panel request in EC - Aircraft is here.  A key issue will be subsidies to the Airbus A350, a new model.  Recall that the panel excluded these subsidies from the original dispute: 7.314 Thus, in conclusion, after carefully reviewing the evidence and arguments

Last week, President Obama announced that he would suspend Argentina's GSP benefits, due to an alleged failure to enforce two arbitration awards: Having considered the factors set forth in section 502(b)(2)(E) of the 1974 Act, I have determined pursuant to section 502(d) that it

From a recent NY Times article about WTO financial services rules: Back in the 1990s, when many in Washington — and virtually everyone on Wall Street — embraced the deregulation that helped lead to the recent crisis, a vast majority of W.T.O. nations made varying commitments to what’s called