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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

The U.S. Record in NAFTA Chapter 11 Cases: Still Undefeated

Over the week-end, the State Department announced the following: On January 12, 2011, a three-member NAFTA arbitration tribunal rejected a claim against the United States filed by Grand River Enterprises Six Nations, Ltd., a Canadian corporation, and Jerry Montour, Kenneth Hill and Arthur Montour Jr., members of Canadian

Location Subsidies for Solar Panel Production

From the NY Times: Aided by at least $43 million in assistance from the government of Massachusetts and an innovative solar energy technology, Evergreen Solar emerged in the last three years as the third-largest maker of solar panels in the United States. But now the company is closing its

Institutional Balance at the WTO

The idea of an "institutional balance" between the legislative, executive and judicial organs of the WTO came up in the India - Quantitative Restrictions and Turkey - Textiles cases. On this issue, see Frieder Roessler's piece entitled "The Institutional Balance between the Judicial and the Political Organs

Dani Rodrik Wants to Restrict Policy Space

Well, for the most part he doesn't. He says: When international cooperation does “succeed,” it spawns rules that are either toothless or reflect the preferences of only the more powerful states. The Basle rules on capital requirements and the World Trade Organization’s rules on subsidies, intellectual property,

Tuna-Dolphin: The NAFTA-WTO Dispute Settlement Conflict

I've mentioned the NAFTA-WTO dispute settlement conflict aspect of the U.S. - Tuna II (DS381) case before (see here and here). Unfortunately, I'm in a little over my head on that issue. I prefer to focus on the substantive aspects (DSC subscribers only) of the

Trade in Everything: Replicas of the Royal Engagement Rings

From Reuters: Britain may be on the other side of the world, but Chinese manufacturers are cashing in on the British royal wedding as they churn out tens of thousands of replica royal engagement rings. Last November, Prince William and his beaming fiancee Kate Middleton showed off the blue sapphire

Current Account Imbalances: Part 2 (Martin Feldstein)

Here's post #2 on the current account imbalances issue. Martin Feldstein thinks these imbalances will, for the most part, take care of themselves, without any grand international plan to fix them. He leads off his paper this way: The high level of current account imbalances has been a

Current Account Imbalances: Part 1 (John Williamson)

There is lots of talk about trade imbalances these days, with surplus countries pitted against deficit countries. There is the U.S. versus China, of course, but there is also Germany versus Greece. The U.S.-China issue gets more press attention (at least here in the U.S.), and

Inter-National versus Intra-National Protectionism

Here's an excerpt from an old post by economist Don Boudreaux (via recent posts from Mark Perry and Scott Lincicome): Ifintra Indeed, such an objective scholar should be open also to the possibility that residents of Nashville can be made wealthier if their leaders restrict their ability to

Making GSP More "Rule-Oriented"

Lorand Bartels and Christian Haeberli have an interesting article on GSP in the latest edition of the JIEL, in which they propose two ways "to increase the security and predictability of these preferential schemes, permitting decisions by investors and traders to be taken without fear of an arbitrary withdrawal