International Economic Law and Policy Blog

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Simon Lester

Susan Franck on Investment Treaty Arbitration

Susan Franck has posted "Development and Outcomes of Investment Treaty Arbitration " on SSRN. Here is the abstract: The legitimacy of investment treaty arbitration is a matter of heated debate. Asserting that arbitration is unfairly tilted toward the developed world, some countries have withdrawn from World Bank dispute resolution

What is Free Trade About?

From Neena Shenai of AEI: Fundamentally, the Obama administration doesn't really get free trade and entirely misses its importance to U.S. national security. Free trade isn't just about economic gains--it is also about reinforcing strategic political and security ties with key allies. As is occasionally

Buy America Issues: Commitments versus Access

There have been quite a few news articles in the past several days about Canadian concerns that Canadian companies are shut out of many U.S. state and local government procurement conracts, but U.S. companies have access to similar Canadian contracts. Some have suggested keeping U.S. companies out

China in WTO Dispute Settlement

Chad Bown on U.S.-China WTO disputes: While many trade policy observers focus on signs of life from the Doha round of negotiations, arguably more important to the long-run relevance of the WTO is how the United States and China politically manage a number of currently ongoing formal trade

The European Commission's Report on U.S. Gambling Measures

Under its Trade Barriers Regulation, the European Commission published a report today concluding that U.S. measures affecting foreign suppliers of Internet gambling services "constitute an obstacle to trade that is inconsistent with WTO rules." The full report is here. The legal analysis is on pages 53-77 and

Bringing Down Health Care Costs

In terms of U.S. domestic politics, health care seems to be trumping trade policy these days. I'd rather talk about trade policy than health care, so I'm going to try to sneak trade policy into the health care discussion by proposing the following: If we

Monitoring Protectionism

Do you have a new instance of protectionism to report? Here's a place to do it: Global Trade Alert provides real-time information on state measures taken during the current global downturn that are likely to affect foreign commerce. It goes beyond other monitoring initiatives by identifying the trading

It's Becoming Difficult to "Buy American"

Dan Ikenson of Cato explains: Shake your head and chuckle as you learn that even the “DNA” of the U.S. steel industry, which pushed for adoption of the most restrictive Buy American provisions and which has been the manufacturing sector’s most vocal proponent of trade barriers over the

Two Views of How To Respond to Buy America

Prime Minister Harper: Canada is interested in a free trade deal with the United States that would open up local government procurements to both countries. The interest comes as Canadian companies continue to report difficulties in winning government contracts in U.S states and cities because of "Buy American&

Two Articles on the Appellate Body

From the latest JIEL, here are two articles on the Appellate Body by Alberto Alvarez-Jimenez: The WTO Appellate Body's Decision-Making Process: A Perfect Model For International Adjudication? The functioning of the Appellate Body (AB) is virtually perfect in terms of collegial decision-making. During its first 12 years, it