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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

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

The U.S., Korea and Trade in Cars

Somehow this seems like a disconnect to me. U.S. and Korean companies working together and trading: General Motors Corp. on Monday named LG Chem Ltd. of South Korea as the lithium-ion battery supplier for its Chevrolet Volt electric car, and the automaker also announced the seeds of what

Trade Talk in the Clinton Confirmation

From a question for Hillary Clinton during her Secretary of State confirmation hearings: SHAHEEN: Thank you. The second question is related somewhat, and it deals with trade. We have a company in New Hampshire -- and forgive me for being parochial -- called Goss International that makes large printing presses. They had

Article XXIV vs Enabling Clause

Frequent commenter Jalal Alavi sends the following: There has been a request submitted by GCC Customs Union ( Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait) to the WTO Committee on Trade and Development to change the status of its notification under article XXIV GATT to a notification

Discrimination Against Domestic Producers

In a comment posted here, Susan Aaronson says: Does the WTO require that member states not discriminate among foreign and domestic producers in instances where foreign producers could be treated better than domestic producers? While the WTO requires that member states provide national treatment to foreign producers, it raises the

Sallie James on U.S. Trade Policy

On reason.tv, Sallie James of the Cato Institute talks about the past Bush trade policy and the future Obama trade policy. It starts at about :50 of the video.