Simon Lester

A guest post from frequent commenter Dr. Henning Große Ruse-Khan ACTA – A Draft Trade Agreement with a Potential to Create Trade Barriers? After years of secrecy and forced by recent leaks (/content/files/files/201001_acta.pdf), the negotiating parties to an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), currently the EU, the

In the comments to another post, two readers suggested a discussion of this memo by the law firm Lalive, written to Philip Morris, entitled "Why Plain Packaging is in Violation of WTO Members’ International Obligations under TRIPS and the Paris Convention." The memo defines "plain packaging"

I haven't yet gotten to the substantive discussion of the NAFTA Chapter 19 panel finding that zeroing violates U.S. law, but in the meantime let me ask this question:  Is there any chance this finding will lead to a constitutional challenge to NAFTA Chapter 19?  That'

In response to this post, a reader points me to the Annex of a 2007 IMF Decision: ANNEX Article IV, Section 1(iii) and Principle A 1. Article IV, Section 1 (iii) of the Fund's Articles provides that members shall "avoid manipulating exchange rates or the international

Dani Rodrik argues: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown promotes it as a vehicle for creating high-skill jobs. French President Nicolas Sarkozy talks about using it to keep industrial jobs in France. The World Bank’s chief economist, Justin Lin, openly supports it to speed up structural change in developing nations.

A new report from ICTSD: African farmers could have gained from a 3.5 percent average increase in world cotton prices, if the US had moved quickly to implement the recommendations of an international trade panel, a new study finds. The study, commissioned ICTSD and conducted by Mario Jales of

Scott Lincicome writes: the Canadians ... announced an amazingly sane response to rapid currency devaluation by... wait for it... the United States.  Here's BNA (subscription) with the embarrassing details: The government will not intervene in the Canadian dollar's continued increase in value compared to the United States