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Simon Lester

Trade in Everything (New Year's Eve Edition): (Alleged) Hallucinogens

From the Palm Beach Post: Blame Johnny Depp's dazed bathtub scene in 2001's From Hell for making absinthe popular. Blame the fall of the Berlin Wall for making it available. It was the post-Soviet Czech Republic that gleefully jumped on the absinthe manufacturing bandwagon. The Czech

Paul Krugman on The "Trouble With Trade"

Paul Krugman has not had much to say about trade (that I've seen) in his op-ed columns, but today he writes: For the world economy as a whole — and especially for poorer nations — growing trade between high-wage and low-wage countries is a very good thing. Above all, it

Some Support for a WTO Agreement on Currency Manipulation

I've said before on this blog (see, e.g. here) that WTO rules on exchange rate manipulation would be useful. I didn't have any detailed proposal in mind; it was my gut instinct plus some very basic arguments. Well, now I can cite to some top-notch

The Chinese Film Ban (If It Existed) No Longer Exists

The Chinese film ban, if there was one, is apparently over: China's blackout of Hollywood films has been broken by the Will Smith starrer "The Pursuit of Happyness," which Chinese film import officials now say will be released here in January. ... 'Happiness Knocks at the

Some Exchange Rate Items of Interest

Here are two unrelated items about exchange rates: 1. From Marginal Revolution: Canadian shoppers taking advantage of the parity between the U.S. and Canadian dollars are leaving behind more than cash when the head home. They're leaving behind their old clothes. Some Canadian shoppers wear their new

Trade in Everything: Christmas Trees

Typepad has a nice feature that lets you schedule a post for publication at a later date, so I'm scheduling this for Christmas day. Two items to note: From the FT, "Fir flies as Danish Xmas tree growers charged": Denmark’s Christmas tree growers, the biggest

The Gambling Arbitration: US$21 Million Per Year

From the Award: 6.1 For the reasons set out above, the Arbitrator determines that the annual level of nullification or impairment of benefits accuing to Antigua in this case is US$21 million and that Antigua has followed the principles and procedures of Article 22.3 of the DSU

The Light Bulb Ban

I was a bit surprised by the ban on incandescent light bulbs in the U.S. energy bill (probably because I hadn't been following the legislation very closely). Usually regulation of this sort consists of higher standards, or maybe occasionally additional taxes, but here we have an outright

The US-EU Gambling Settlement Is Not So Settled

So the EU is now out of the picture in the gambling dispute because they settled on compensation ... Wait, hold on a minute: European online gaming firms are filing a formal complaint against the United States for discrimination after their controversial exit from the US market. The companies say that

Why Does the WTO Have So Much Power?

Dani Rodrik asks: Whether you like it or not, the WTO is the only international organization in existence that actually makes the U.S. do what it would not otherwise have done on its own. No other organization has such power. I would love it if somebody would come up