International Economic Law and Policy Blog

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Simon Lester

Tobacco Labelling Restrictions under Domestic Law

For those following the various aspects of the legality of domestic tobacco labelling restrictions under international economic law, this U.S. court decision (reported by the AP) may be of interest: A judge on Monday blocked a federal requirement that would have begun forcing tobacco companies next year to put

The Intent of a Measure and the "Likeness" / "Less Favorable Treatment" Elements

There are many people who think that intent (or aim or motive or purpose or policy justification, or whatever you want to call it) should not be part of the National Treatment obligation. For these people, such issues are better left to exception provisions, such as GATT Article XX. But

More on Australian Plain Packaging and TRIPS

From a recent TRIPS Council meeting: Australia’s plain packaging bill for tobacco products The bill, first discussed in the last meeting, has passed the lower house and is now in the Senate, Australia reported. It is part Australia’s anti-smoking campaign. (See also this Australian government web page, which

Server Farm Subsidies

From the AP: Facebook will build a new server farm on the edge of the Arctic Circle — its first outside the U.S. — that will improve performance for European users of the social networking site, officials said Thursday. ... Facebook didn't give the price of its investment, but Lulea

TPP's Regulatory Coherence Chapter

I feel like much of the talk about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) relates to IP and health issues. More interesting to me is the proposed (and recently leaked) "regulatory coherence" chapter. Here's an excerpt: 1. Through its national coordinating body, process or mechanism, each Party,

Section 337 and Extraterritoriality

From customs law blogger Larry Friedman, here is a brief summary of an interesting Section 337 case, Tianrui Group v. International Trade Commission: The underlying issue in this case is interesting for two reasons. First, it relates to trade secrets. Second, it relates to activity occurring entirely in China. The

The Interpretative Use of Object and Purpose in TRIPS Cases

A guest post from Henning Grosse Ruse - Khan: "The TRIPS Agreement is probably the only WTO Agreement which contains explicit textual expression of its object and purpose in its Articles 7 and 8. At the same time, it has a lot of provisions with (constructive) ambiguities where a

More on the SolarWorld AC/CVD Complaint

Following up on the last post, I was curious about the reference to "WTO-legal subsidies and WTO-illegal subsidies." So I asked the SolarWorld people the following question: In what way are the Chinese subsidies "WTO-illegal"? Does that mean that they violate the SCM Agreement in the

More on Responses to Foreign Subsidies

Yesterday brought news of an AC/CVD petition in the U.S. in relation to imports of Chinese solar panels. Here's the FT: A coalition of US solar panel manufacturers asked on Wednesday for retaliatory tariffs on imports of panels from China, the first such case filed in

“Do Subsidies Justify Retaliatory Protectionism?”

From economist Don Boudreaux: As an empirical matter ... the costs of subsidies are borne chieﬂy by citizens of the country whose government uses subsidies while the beneﬁt of subsidies is enjoyed overwhelmingly by that country’s trading partners. Still – because trade makes markets less and less national and more and