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Simon Lester

The Real Purpose of Trade Agreements?

From a free trade petition put out by the the Atlas Global Initiative for Free Trade, Peace, and Prosperity: But the fact that protectionism destroys wealth is not its worst consequence. Protectionism destroys peace. That is justification enough for all people of good will, all friends of civilization, to speak

Is WTO Adjudication Biased?

From the abstract of a "A Theory of WTO Adjudication: From Empirical Analysis to Biased Rule Development," by Juscelino Colares: The positive theory of litigation predicts that, under certain conditions, plaintiffs and defendants achieve an unremarkable and roughly equivalent share of litigation success. This Article, grounded in an

Foreign Investment Fears Go Both Ways

The AP reports: China denied Coca-Cola Co.'s closely watched $2.5 billion bid to buy a major Chinese juice producer Wednesday, highlighting Beijing's rejection of foreign control over its top companies even as they step up acquisitions abroad. ... Coca-Cola's acquisition of Huiyuan Juice Group

NAFTA Chapter 20 Suspension in the Trucking Case

News reports indicate that Mexico is going ahead with retaliation in the NAFTA Trucking Services case: Mexico slapped tariffs on 90 American agricultural and manufactured exports on Monday in retaliation for Washington's move to block Mexican trucks from using U.S. highways. Here's the part that

Obama and Lula on Trade in Biofuels

From their recent joint press conference: Question: President Lula said that during their meeting they talked about energy, President Obama talked about a possible partnership for energy within the hemisphere. The question I have is can't this partnership get off-balance? Because there's a lot of interest

Dani Rodrik Prefers the GATT to the WTO

In the context of writing about what is needed in the field of financial regulation, Dani Rodrik says: In short, global financial regulation is neither feasible, nor prudent, nor desirable. What finance needs instead are some sensible traffic rules that will allow nations (and in some cases regions) to implement

More on NAFTA Chapter 11 Non-Discrimination

I did a recent post discussing NAFTA Chapter 11 non-discrimination standards, in the context of the Grand River Enterprises case. In response, I got a number of helpful comments, which made clear to me that there was a lot I did not know about NAFTA Chapter 11 non-discrimination standards. Rather

Ron Kirk's Answers to Senators' Written Questions

Ron Kirk's answers to the written questions of Senators on the Finance Committee are available here. It is a 129 page document, with lots of questions and mostly brief answers. Below the jump, I pulled out the ones that I found most noteworthy (in some instances the question

The New Tuna-Dolphin Case

It appears that Mexico is moving ahead with its complaint against U.S. dolphin-safe tuna labeling measures. Here is the panel request: http://www.worldtradelaw.net/pr/ds381-4(pr).pdf The specific claims are as follows: 1. Mexican products are not accorded immediately and unconditionally any advantage, favour, privilege or

Expanding NAFTA Chapter 19

Stephen Powell of University of Florida Law School has posted a paper entitled "Expanding the NAFTA Chapter 19 Dispute Settlement System: A Way to Declaw Trade Remedy Laws in a Free Trade Area of the Americas?" Here's the abstract: Chapter 19 of the NAFTA transfers judicial