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Simon Lester

Jon Huntsman on Free Trade

Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, a candidate for the Republican nomination, is not doing very well in the polls. However, he does get support from "serious" circles. In a recent speech, he had the following to say in support of free trade and trade agreements: “As a former

The U.S. Appellate Body Nominations: Graham and Greenwald

From the USTR press release (I added the links to their law firm profiles): United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk today nominated Thomas Graham and John Greenwald to serve as members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Appellate Body. Graham and Greenwald are acknowledged leaders in the field of international

More on Ontario's Feed in Tariffs

Having talked to some people, and read some things, and looked at an old blog post, I think I now see a few of the legal issues that could arise in relation to the Ontario feed in tariff WTO complaint brought by Japan and the EU against Canada. First, with

GATT Article XX, Environmental Measures, and the SCM Agreement

Can GATT Article XX be invoked to justify emissions trading schemes that violate the SCM Agreement? This is from Ingrid Jegou and Luca Rubini in an ICTSD issues paper: Four aspects should be noted regarding the SCM Agreement. First, as noted above, this instrument is directly connected to the GATT

Some WTO Members' Views on the AB's New Export Contingency Standard

From the June 1 DSB meeting, here are the views of Brazil, Canada and Australia -- three Members who have been involved in export subsidy cases -- on the Appellate Body's new export contingency standard, as set out in EC - Aircraft: Brazil 15. Turning to export subsidies,

Some Very Old "Likeness" Arguments

I'll tell you how old at the end of the post. The issue was whether Russia hemp was a "like article" to Manila hemp, in the MFN context. Here's one side of the argument: The turning point in the treaty will be found in

More NAFTA Chapter 19 Zeroing

Last year, a NAFTA Chapter 19 panel found that zeroing violates U.S. law. See this post for details. The panel thus remanded the matter back to Commerce to re-calculate the dumping margins without zeroing. Commerce did take some action, but the respondents felt that it was insufficient, and went

Domestic Content Requirements under the Ontario Feed-In Tariff

As reported last week, the EU has joined Japan in its WTO challenge to domestic content requirements in Ontario's feed-in tariff measure. The EU consultations request is here. I wish I had more to say about the substance of this case. It would help if I knew what

Coals to Newcastle, Chopsticks to China?

From the Economist: ASK someone to write down all the differences between China and rural Georgia and his hand will fall off before he’s halfway done. So let us restrict ourselves to the vista: cranes, skyscrapers, spanking new rail networks and smog: China. Barbecue restaurants, red clay and trees:

The International Economic Law of "Seasteading"

I stumbled across this very interesting news article: Pay Pal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel has given $1.25 million to an initiative to create floating libertarian countries in international waters, according to a profile of the billionaire in Details magazine. Thiel has been a big backer of