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Simon Lester

Simon Lester

Co-founder of WorldTradeLaw.net and China Trade Monitor. Non-resident fellow at the Baker Institute.

http://simonlester.com

Can Authorized Trade Retaliation Violate Investment Law Provisions?

A reader emailed expressing concern about the Cargill NAFTA Chapter 11 Award, in particular this part: 299. Reviewing closely the record of this case, the Tribunal finds ample support for the conclusion that the import permit was one of a series of measures expressly intended to injure United States HFCS

National Treatment in the NAFTA Chapter 11 Cargill Award

The Cargill v. Mexico NAFTA Chapter 11 award is available here. It was sent to the parties in September 2009, but it is just now being released publicly. In this post, I'm just going to make a quick point about the National Treatment analysis. When I first started

The Seal Products Dispute: Blocked for Now

The EU has blocked the first panel request in the WTO seal products dispute. From Bloomberg: The European Union blocked Canadian efforts to have the World Trade Organization decide whether an EU ban on trade in seal products breaks global trade rules. The EU won’t be able to prevent

Will the WTO Become Obsolete?

Writing in Newsweek, Daniel Altman argues that the future of free trade lies with bilateral and regional trade talks, and says "good riddance" to the WTO. I think he elaborates on his views in this book, but I haven't read it yet so I'll

More on Anti-Dumping Payments

Here's more on the issue of cash payments to settle anti-dumping cases, from a reader who wants to remain anonymous: The Wall Street Journal article has been picked up and commented on by others. See, e.g., http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/tony-soprano-meets-the-

Ontario's Dairy Restrictions under Canada's Agreement on Internal Trade

Sometimes when you just can't get enough international trade law, you have to look to domestic trade law. I've talked about the U.S. dormant commerce clause jurisprudence before. Now I see an opportunity to move North, with some discussion of the Canadian Agreement on Internal

The Seal Products Panel Requests

There are two of them, one for the DS369 dispute and one for the DS400 dispute. These were both brought by Canada; no word yet on whether Norway will be making a panel request to follow its consultations request in DS401. DS369 deals with consultations from 2007, relating to Belgian

Grand River Enterprises Update

I talked about the non-discrimination aspects of the Grand River Enterprises NAFTA Chapter 11 dispute here, here and here. Based on the arguments made by the parties, I was hopeful that the decision would have something interesting to say about these issues. Alas, it was not to be. The

Cash Payments to Petitioners to Avoid Higher Anti-Dumping Duties

Via a tradelawnews tweet, I came across this WSJ article: Some U.S. furniture makers and their lawyers have found a reliable way to extract cash from Chinese competitors deemed by U.S. officials to have "dumped" their products in the U.S., selling them at unfairly low

More on Banning Plastic Bags

In the comments, Chris Wold, a law prof at Lewis and Clark law school in Oregon who specializes in trade and environment issues, adds some details about the proposed ban on plastic bags in Oregon: the bill may look discriminatory to a panel: no plastic bags are made in Oregon