International Economic Law and Policy Blog

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Simon Lester

"Buy America" Stimulus Provisions

Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio supports them: "As we are losing jobs in record numbers, we obviously need to devote these funds to direct creation of American jobs. To do that, we must ensure that federal funds are used to buy American products and to help promote manufacturing in

Follow-up on Bailing out "Foreign" Car Companies

When I mentioned the Fiat-Chrysler alliance the other day, and expressed a little surprise that a bailout of a "foreign" company would go through without protests by some members of Congress, this is the kind of thing I had in mind: Chrysler LLC should be required to

Measures to Support Domestic Production

From the Economist: The president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, has made it clear that support for PSA Peugeot-Citroën and Renault will depend on production staying in the country. This is the kind of measure -- in essence, a location incentive -- that feels like it violates WTO rules, but probably does

Foreign Investment and the Auto Bailout

From the FT: Chrysler declared its new alliance with Fiat would enhance its long-term viability yesterday in an apparent bid by the Detroit carmaker to strengthen its case for billions of extra dollars in US government aid. This is interesting. When I saw the headline about Fiat's

The Hormones Sanctions Trade Battle is Heating Up

Some people in France want to retaliate for the extra import duties just imposed by the U.S. on French cheese: "Symbol versus symbol," said Philippe Folliot, a French member of parliament whose Tarn constituency contains many roquefort producers. "Since the United States has decided to surtax

Separation of Trade Powers

H.R. 496, the "Trade Enforcement Act of 2009", introduced by Reps. Rangel and Levin, would shift some trade power from the President to Congress. It would create an "Office of the Congressional Trade Enforcer," whose purpose is "to ensure compliance by trading partners of

Buffett on the Trade Deficit

This piece by Warren Buffett is a bit old, but a commenter here just drew it to my attention. Normally I wouldn't comment on something from so long ago. However, given that it was published before this blog existed (so I couldn't comment at the time)

Law Clerks at the Appellate Body

The U.S. proposes giving each Appellate Body Member his/her own law clerk: ... Appellate Body members currently rely on a common pool of Appellate Body Secretariat employees to perform research and manage appeals. However, an Appellate Body member does not have any personal staff dedicated to working on the

Inaugurating a New U.S. Trade Policy

There will be no avoiding trade issues for long, even if President-Elect Obama wanted to, as they will apparently play a role in the inauguration: Barack Obama has a pungent and politically charged inauguration gift coming his way from France. The head of a region in the Pyrenees known

The GATT/GATS Overlap

In a piece about Rolls-Royce, the Economist notes: In practice, there is no clear line between what counts as a service and what has been made. Look closer and those burger-flippers work on a small assembly line. Rolls-Royce’s designers, salesforce, analysts and financial-support staff are