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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

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

Chinese Price Fixing

The Wall Street Journal reports on a civil antitrust complaint accusing four Chinese vitamin makers of price fixing. China's Ministry of Commerce got involved in the case, putting forward a defense of sovereign immunity: In its filings and oral arguments, the ministry broadly asserted sovereign immunity in its

Trade in Everything: Legal Services

From the WSJ law blog, it looks as though the impact of trade is becoming a little more personal for us lawyers: The WSJ reports today that outsourcing legal work to India continues to be a booming business. As the economy has soured, the business has only picked up, since

The Auto Bailout: The Other Subsidies

Most of the recent auto bailout focus has been on subsidies requested by the Big Three. But there is also the matter of the state tax incentives given to foreign automakers to set up factories there: The United Auto Workers Union boss [Ron Gettelfinger] also hit out at those US

Two Canadian Views of North American Integration

Anne McLellan of the University of Alberta: ... the treaty needs a revamp, she says, and should be expanded. The transition period where the three countries were losing jobs to each other is long over, and trade between the U.S. and Canada reached over a trillion dollars last year. Other

The Auto Bailout: What People Are Worried About

There are a lot of subsidies for the auto industry being proposed, and in response many concerns about these subsidies have been noted. In terms of trade issues, most of these concerns are unlikely to turn into formal complaints. Rather, as noted previously here, they are probably just being put