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Simon Lester

GATT Article XX as a Defense to Non-GATT Agreements

Following up on posts here, here, here and here about GATT Article XX as a defense to claims under non-GATT agreements, this is from last Tuesday's China - Raw Materials panel report: 7.152 This brings us to the issue of whether Article XX of the GATT 1994

Farm Subsidies, the U.S. Budget Deficit, and the Doha Round

Former Appellate Body Member Jim Bacchus makes the case for cutting farm subsidies: The federal budgetary squeeze on agricultural subsidies offers the President and Congress a beckoning opportunity to seize and shape a grand global bargain on international trade. We could trade new cuts in farm subsidies for new markets

Carving Tobacco out of Trade Agreements

I've heard this argument before, but I've never seen it written up (and thus been able to blog about it). Here's the text of a draft letter to USTR Ron Kirk, which is being circulated by Congresswoman Linda Sanchez to her House colleagues: ... We

New Zealand, Plain Packaging, and Investor-State

How is New Zealand reacting to the Philip Morris investment claim against Australia's plain packaging law? This is from the New Zealand Herald: Big tobacco companies won't be able to sue the Government over anti-smoking laws, Prime Minister John Key says. Philip Morris Asia, based in

Currency Undervaluation at the CIT

Here's more on China currency issues, from Mark Drajem of Bloomberg: Aluminum-product makers filed a lawsuit to force the U.S. Commerce Department to levy tariffs on Chinese imports, countering the effect of a currency the companies deem to be undervalued. In a case at the Court of

The GOP Candidates on China's Currency

Here are a few quotes from some of the GOP Presidential candidates about the Chinese currency issue and trade with China generally. Romney and Pawlenty seem to be the China hawks, with Huntsman more dovish (in particular, see the last part of the Huntsman quote below). Mitt Romney: VAN SUSTEREN:

Two Mitchell/Voon Papers

From Andrew Mitchell: Readers may be interested to read the following draft papers that I have recently co-authored with Tania Voon on the impact of WTO law on two ambitious new Australian schemes. The first paper focuses on the application of the GATS (and related obligations under Australia’s preferential

More from the CAFC on Inconsistent Zeroing

Following up on this post, here is another decision (JTEKT CORP v. US, released yesterday) from the CAFC that talks about whether the Department of Commerce can take an inconsistent approach to zeroing (no zeroing in investigations, but zeroing in administrative reviews): V. Commerce’s Use of Zeroing We have

Book Review of Dani Rodrik's "The Globalization Paradox"

Sometimes I write things longer than a blog post. I've talked about Dani Rodrik's views on trade a number of times (see, e.g., here, here, here and here). Now I've gone a little further, and written a book review of his latest book,

Another Tobacco Investment Treaty Claim

Via a John Boscariol tweet, I see that there is a new tobacco regulation investment treaty claim in the works: INTERNATIONAL tobacco giant Philip Morris will launch legal action today aimed at forcing the Gillard government to back down on its plain-packaging legislation or face a compensation bill of "