Simon Lester

Todd Tucker of Global Trade Watch points to a recent Brazilian ban on all flavored cigarettes: Unless you're an avid reader of Spanish and Portuguese language news wires, you probably missed Brazil's announcement last month of a ban on all flavored cigarettes: cloves, chocolates, and even

As we all know, SCM Agreement Article 3 says that "subsidies contingent, in law or in fact, whether solely or as one of several other conditions, upon export performance" -- in other words, export subsidies -- "shall be prohibited."  So, no export subsidies at all right?

Over at Opinio Juris, some familiar names are discussing a new paper by Joel Trachtman and Greg Shaffer, “Interpretation and Institutional Choice at the WTO.”  Here's how the authors describe the paper: Our article develops a new framework for understanding the drafting and interpretation of the agreements of

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