International Economic Law and Policy Blog

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Simon Lester

Trade in Everything: Hooter's Restaurants

From the Palm Beach Post: The American Owl — the Chinese name for Hooters — has capitalized on such trademarks of American culture to prosper in China. Since opening the first American Owl in 2004, owner Jim Li has expanded the chain to five restaurants in three cities. "Hooters has a

Eric Posner Imagines a Non-Discriminatory Auto Bailout

From the Volokh Conspiracy: The government would offer cheap loans to foreign automakers as well as domestic automakers, for example. The stimulus would benefit the Japanese and German economies as well as the American economy, but it would not give any advantage to American automakers unless their problem is really

A (Limited) Obama NAFTA Update

From an interview with the LA Times: Q: ... Also, on NAFTA, we've heard that you might support maybe a study and then a report, instead of a wholesale reworking of the agreement right away? [Obama]: Well look, my economic team is reviewing these issues. You know, I'

The Supreme Court Hears a Dumping Case

ScotusWiki summarizes here. From the argument preview they prepared: Tomorrow in Nos. 07-1078 and 07-1059, USEC v. Eurodif and United States v. Eurodif, the Supreme Court will consider whether the Federal Circuit should have accorded Chevron deference to the Commerce Department’s construction of 19 U.S.C.

Trade News

Those of you who read this blog at the web site (as opposed to a feed reader or email) probably noticed the trade news articles on the right side of the page. This is something we are working on for WorldTradeLaw.net, but thought we'd try it out

Careful What You Propose

This letter to the FT makes a good point: Sir, A colleague wondered whether a Detroit bail-out would run afoul of the World Trade Organisation rules prohibiting government subsidies that grant unfair export/import advantage to domestic manufacturers. A quick Google search revealed that in June 2007 the US

Becerra's Trade Views

Below the jump, here are the Dissenting Views of the DR-CAFTA Committee Report, which Xavier Becerra signed on to. To me, this is a pretty good indication of where he stands in terms of making changes to the current trade agreement model. DISSENTING VIEWS The Dominican Republic-Central America-

Blog Comments

After upgrading the comments feature recently, I noticed that the following appears above the comments form: "Sign in or sign up for a free account." Just to let everyone know, you do not have to sign in to post a comment and comments can still be done anonymously.

An Optimistic View of the Democrats' Trade Policy

I have seen a lot of concern expressed about the bad things that might happen to trade policy now that the Democrats are in charge. Here's a more positive view, from Robert McMahon of the Council on Foreign Relations, writing in Newsweek: Some analysts, however, see an opportunity

Xavier Becerra May Be the New U.S. Trade Representative

From Politico: Democrats expect California Congressman Xavier Becerra to fill the slot of United States Trade Representative, JMart reports. Here's more from CQPolitics. ADDED: From Bloomberg. Also, James Pethokoukis of U.S. News and World Report says: More to come, but at this point it looks like Becerra