Simon Lester

Ian Fletcher Some of Dan’s arguments continue to be  mere distractions.  Taking  North Korea and Burma as proof of the harm of a no-trade (or close to it) policy falls down on the fact that North Korea has a communist economy and Burma a quasi-socialist state-controlled one, economic defects

by Daniel Griswold Free Trade has endured since Adam Smith as a robust theory, and it has proven itself in practice across the decades as being superior to government restrictions. There is nothing new in Ian’s theoretical critique of free trade. In a 1996 book, Against the Tide: An

Speaking of investor-state disputes, as I was yesterday, it looks like many of the big names in the field will be assembling for a conference soon: On March 29, 2010, Washington and Lee School of Law will host a Joint Symposium with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

Multiple branches of government can be a real pain sometimes. In the ongoing WTO EC - IT Products dispute (DS375, and also DS376 and DS377 brought by Japan and Chinese Taipei), the U.S. (that is, USTR) argued that the EC's reclassification of certain monitors in a way

It's not a sophisticated legal analysis, but I found this blogger's points to be interesting in terms of how non-specialists see the scope of trade rules: When business people are in doubt, they can always claim unfair trade in order to tap government diplomats and the

By Daniel Griswold   In the spirit of civility, something lacking in Washington these days, let me start with a compliment for my worthy opponent. Ian Fletcher has resisted the temptation to demagogue trade and jobs. He is right that trade and the trade deficit do not cause a net loss

By Ian Fletcher Dan’s cheery (if somewhat bubble-inflated) statistics on the recent general prosperity of the U.S. are a mere distraction here, as nothing about these figures indicates whether free trade worsened or improved them.  So I will not address them. Some of Dan’s analytically-relevant assertions, however,