International Economic Law and Policy Blog

Sign in Subscribe

Simon Lester

Non-Discrimination: How Others Do It

The proper standard for non-discrimination has long been a vexing question in GATT/WTO law. Is there anything to be learned from seeing how others do it? Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court decided a "dormant" commerce clause case, where non-discrimination is part of the legal standard (at

Dani Rodrik on Free Trade and Lower Prices

Dani Rodrik has entered the blogosphere. In one of his first posts, he questions whether free trade leads to lower prices. At the risk of getting into issues that I don't know as much about as I wish I did, I'm going to offer a criticism

The Leading Democrats on Trade

There's little question that the 2008 U.S. Presidential election will have a significant impact on future U.S. trade policy and bilateral/multilateral trade negotiations in general. Here's what the three leading Democratic candidates (listed alphabetically, to avoid any suggestion of favoritism) have had to

Should there be a "Healthy Foods" Subsidies Exception?

A NY Times article reports that U.S. farm subsidies are mainly for corn, soybeans, wheat, rice and cotton, and says that "U.S. agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to promote the overproduction of these five commodities, especially corn and soy." The result,

International Antitrust

Most people will be happy with a very limited agreement in the Doha Round at this point, so pushing for multilateral rules on antitrust/competition policy seems pointless. Nevertheless, antitrust law has become global, with both the U.S and EC regulatory regimes overlapping in a number of ways, and

The China Complaints: Hot off the Electronic Press

The WTO has now made the two recent U.S. complaints against China available. Here they are on WorldTradeLaw.net (the free part), in PDF format: DS362: China - Measures Affecting the Protection and Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights DS363: China - Measures Affecting Trading Rights and Distribution Services for

Trade in Biofuels

There's a new paper posted on SSRN by Stephanie Switzer, a regular commenter on this blog, entitled "International Trade Law and the Environment: Designing a Legal Framework to Curtail the Import of Unsustainably Produced Biofuel." Here's the abstract: "Discussions on the appropriate international

The Problem of Subsidies

There have been a lot of news reports regarding the decision by the Department of Commerce to change gears and apply countervailing duties to non-market economies like China (on certain paper imports right now, but possibly many new products in the future). There are a number of specific legal issues

KORUS FTA

Korea and the U.S. have agreed to an FTA. Ben Muse has a useful post here detailing the history of the negotiations. USTR's press release about the agreement is here. Based on news reports, key issues in the negotiations were resolved as follows. From the AP: South

Fears about Offshoring

Greg Mankiw is famous (infamous?) for his statements about offshoring back in 2004, when he was Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors. At the time, he said: the "offshoring" of U.S. service jobs is only "the latest manifestation of the gains from trade