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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

Trade and Income

Over at vox, Pravin Krishna and Mine Z. Senses explain how trade can negatively affect income: In recent research (Krishna and Senses 2009), we have studied a different dimension of the labour market experience and focused on the effect of increased trade on the risk to income (the variance of

Trade in Everything: Christmas Nutcrackers

It's definitely the Christmas season. Santa yesterday, now a reader points me to this story about nutcrackers: Low-cost imports of nutcrackers pose a risk to the age-old woodcraft of eastern Germany's Erzgebirge region, famous for its Christmas ornaments. The Chinese-made replicas may increasingly

Santa's Trade Violations

According to Patrick Thomas and Tom Barry, he is dumping, not to mention violating IP rules, destroying the environment, using genetically modified reindeer and abusing his labor.

Brower on Investment Disciplines in FTAs

Over at the Kluwer Arbitration blog, Charles Brower II has an excellent post about possibilities for “rebalancing” or “recalibration” of substantive investment disciplines in FTAs, including NAFTA. Two of the key points are as follows:1. It's not easy to amend the investment provisions of FTAs.When it

The Tuna-Dolphin Panel

The new Tuna-Dolphin WTO dispute could be trouble for the system, which is bad, but will have some very interesting legal issues, which is good (or fun to follow, anyway). Among other things, there will be issues related to: (1) choice of forum as between NAFTA and the WTO;

The Bananas Dispute Settlement: Who Wins?

European consumers: Banana prices are set to fall after the longest trade dispute in EU history was settled in Geneva today. Latin American exporters: The change means banana prices in the EU will drop 11 percent while Latin American producers will see exports climb, said Giovanni Anania, a professor at

Financial Contribution to One Entity, Benefit to Another

I can recall talking with a number of people about the issue of whether a subsidy may exist where the financial contribution goes to one entity, but the benefit is to another. It appears that this issue has come up in the DS379 dispute. Here's a question from

The Shortest WTO Dispute Written Submission Ever

It's the U.S. first written submission in the U.S. - AD Measures on Carrier Bags (DS383) case, related to zeroing. It's five paragraphs long. Here's the fifth and final paragraph: 5. The United States acknowledges the accuracy of Thailand’s description of the

Policy Space for Industrialization: How Constraining Is The WTO?

I've blogged about Dani Rodrik and policy space before. He is now making similar points related to the specific case of China, arguing that China's currency undervaluation is a substitute for the protectionist policies it can no longer undertake as a result of joining the WTO:

Accountability at the WTO

From a letter by Daniel Bradlow to the FT: The World Bank and the regional development banks have all created independent accountability mechanisms that can investigate bank-funded operations in which non-state actors believe they have been harmed by the failure of these organisations to comply with their own