ZEROING POLL
This poll is highly unscientific, but nevertheless I'm curious to see what people think! I'm going to keep it at the top for a few days to give people a chance to vote.
ADDED: I realize now that I should have made more clear that I
Simon Lester
Investment Protection for Whom?
Aren't investment protection rules designed to protect investments by Western companies in developing countries? That may have been the original idea, but now the situation seems more complicated:
With Indian firms investing aggressively in the US, India has put on fast track negotiations on signing an investment protection
ICJ Job
Amy Porges points me to this vacancy notice for a Senior Legal Officer/First Secretary of the Court at the International Court of Justice: http://www.asil.org/pdfs/vacancy.pdf
Update on the Seals Dispute
It has been a while since we talked about the Canada-EU seals dispute at the WTO (see here, here and here). It's not clear to me where this is all going, but here is the latest:
The European Commission's ambassador to Canada says efforts are
Can Unilateral Carbon Measures Be Consistent with WTO Rules?
My good friends over at the law firm Sidley Austin have done an analysis of whether certain cap-and-trade greenhouse gas legislation under consideration in the U.S. is consistent with WTO rules. They argue that unilateral legislation can be written in a way that complies with WTO rules,
Hillary Clinton's "Pro-America Trade Agenda"
Yesterday was Barack Obama day here on this blog. Today is Hillary Clinton day.
In her recent Economic Blueprint for the 21st Century, Hillary Clinton sets out a "Pro-America Trade Agenda." (As an aside, do politicians in other countries use similar phrases? For example, do Koreans running
Peter Gallagher on the New Agriculture Text
Peter Gallagher looks at the latest WTO agriculture text and finds that it comes up short in many ways. I enjoyed his closing part:
The zombie vampire award in this catalog of half-way-measures goes to the “Commodities” section of the text. Here we find a proposal that the
Obama's Trade Views in the Blogosphere
A number of bloggers and others have been talking about Barack Obama's views on trade recently. Many seem to feel that he is moving towards a "populist" view on trade (some make this point approvingly, others disapprovingly).
Examples of those in favor of a populist approach
Trade in Everything: International Basketball
From Sports Illustrated (via CNN):
American basketball is planning to create up to five new European franchises who would compete for the NBA Championship, according to a report by Sports Illustrated.
The astonishing claims come hard on the heels of plans by the football's English Premier League to
Update on the Gambling GATS XXI Arbitration
I had been hoping that the GATS Article XXI arbitration in the Gambling dispute would be as transparent as regular WTO disputes. I'm not sure that will be the case, though, as the arbitration requests have not yet been made public on the WTO's web site