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Simon Lester

Are Digital Services Taxes Discriminatory? Who Should Decide?

In my last post, I talked about how USTR is continuing on with the Section 301 proceedings in several cases related to digital services taxes. In its announcement, USTR said: "In January, USTR found that the DSTs adopted by Austria, India, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom were

The Biden Administration's Approach to Section 301

On Friday, USTR announced its next steps in many of the Section 301 digital services tax cases: The United States Trade Representative (USTR) today announced the next steps in its Section 301 investigations of Digital Service Taxes (DSTs) adopted or under consideration by ten U.S. trading partners. In January,

What Did the U.S. Originally Have in Mind for the Appellate Body? "Uniform Interpretation" vs “A Coherent and Predictable Body of Jurisprudence”

One of the issues that has come up in the Appellate Body appointments crisis is what exactly the Appellate Body's role should be. You can imagine a range of options here. At one extreme, it could be an arbitrator that decides the outcome without any reasoning at all.

Is Non-Discrimination in U.S. Digital Trade Agreements Nationality-Based?

Non-discrimination guru Lothar Ehring had a comment on my last post on non-discrimination in digital trade agreements, raising an issue I hadn't noticed: By eliminating a comparison with domestic products, the wording of certain non-discrimination provisions perhaps steers the provisions away from nationality-based discrimination in an even broader

More on Exceptions Language in Digital Trade Agreements

Following up on my earlier posts about exceptions in digital trade chapters/agreements, here's another issue in this same area (thanks to Thomas Streinz for bringing it to my attention). This is the USMCA cross-border transformation of information by electronic means obligation and exception: Article 19.11: Cross-Border

What Does the U.S. Want on WTO DS? (And DSU Article 11 in Particular)

This morning I watched a very interesting IIEL event on "Rethinking the WTO: Opportunities for Transatlantic Cooperation," moderated by Joost Pauwelyn, and featuring Sabine Weyand, Jennifer Hillman, Thomas Graham, and Henry Gao as panelists. (I think they will post the recorded video at some point.) One thing Tom

A Trade Hackathon

This is from CTEI, the IIEL, and the Geneva Trade Platform: G-2 CONFERENCE AND HACKATHON CHALLENGE 2O21 - HOW TO MAKE THE WTO FIT FOR FUTURE TRADE 09-11 APRIL | HACKATHON CHALLENGE 14 APRIL - 15:00-20:00 CET | G-2 CONFERENCE This year, our annual G-2 Conference 14 April 2021, will

If the AB Appointments Crisis Is Resolved, What Happens to the Pending Appeals?

A trade lawyer I know wrote to me with the following comment/question for this blog's readers: I believe that any resolution of the AB crisis will be “Walker +”, i.e. the Walker Principles plus some face-saving way of addressing “substantive overreach”. As long as we avoid linkage

SIEL March Conversation: Managing Trade, Health and Equitable Access to Medicines during a Global Pandemic

This is from the SIEL: SIEL March ConversationThe Society of International Economic Law (SIEL) is pleased to invite you to its February Conversation entitled ‘Managing Trade, Health and Equitable Access to Medicines during a Global Pandemic’, with Fatima Hassan (Health Justice Initiative), James Bacchus (Center for Global Economic and Environmental

Non-Discrimination Provisions in Digital Trade Chapters/Agreements: "A Digital Product" vs. "Digital Products," and the Impact on Policy Space

I did a couple posts recently on proposed exceptions language in the WTO e-commerce negotiations. My point there was to raise the issue of exceptions that are written in a way that could interfere with non-discriminatory measures that are designed to achieve legitimate public policies. "Necessary," in my