International Economic Law and Policy Blog

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Simon Lester

The WTO Dispute Process In the Pandemic and Beyond

This is from a statement by a number of WTO Members at the September 28 DSB meeting: As we have seen, the WTO dispute settlement system is not immune to the impacts of COVID-19. It is encouraging that, since July, delegates have been able to resume DSB meetings at the

PhD Scholarship in International Trade Law/International Investment Law/International IP Law

Christian Riffel of the University of Canterbury writes to say that he is looking for a PhD student in the areas of international trade law/international investment law/international IP law. The full description of the PhD scholarship is here. The deadline is December 1. New Zealand seems like a

"Who Will Get the Coronavirus Vaccines and When?": Waiving TRIPS Rules To Fight COVID-19

Burcu Kilic of Public Citizen, along with some of her colleagues, had an op-ed this week in The Guardian, in which they argued the following: But who will get the coronavirus vaccines and when? There are two big problems: whether they will be affordable, and whether there will be enough

Questions about the U.S.-Japan Trade Agreement and GATT Article XXIV

Last year, the U.S. and Japan signed a trade agreement that lowers tariffs on a small number of goods. Ever since it was signed, people have been wondering how this agreement is consistent with GATT Article XXIV, which in paragraph 8(b) says that "substantially all the trade&

Trade In Last Night's VP Debate

Trade came up a bit in last night's Vice-Presidential debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris. Here's what they said: Harris: ... The vice-president earlier referred to it as part of what he thinks is an accomplishment. The president’s trade war with China. You lost that

Another Agreement To Use DSU Article 25 For Appeals

I have noted previously four agreements between parties in particular disputes to use the MPIA for appeals in the event there is no Appellate Body when the time comes for an appeal. Now we have a similar, albeit much less detailed, agreement to use DSU Article 25 for this purpose

Ad Hoc Appeal Arbitration under DSU Article 25

This is from a communication from Qatar in the Saudi Arabia - IP Rights cases, which Saudi Arabia recently appealed into the void: Subject : Proposal for an appeal-arbitration arrangement under Article 25 of the DSU in Saudi Arabia – Protection of Intellectual Property Rights (WT/DS567) On 28 July 2020, Saudi

App Bans and International Trade Obligations

Inside US Trade reports the following discussion of restrictions on TikTok and WeChat at a WTO Council for Trade in Services meeting last week: The U.S. violated World Trade Organization rules with its recently imposed restrictions on Chinese-owned social media platforms TikTok and WeChat, China argued on Friday in

Guest Post: “The EU Gives Foreign Subsidies Its Best Shot”: One Take on White Paper on Levelling the Playing Field as Regards Foreign Subsidies

This is a guest post by Professor Andrea Biondi and Michael Bowsher QC, King’s College London, Professor Christopher Yukins, George Washington University Dr Luca Rubini University of Birmingham and PhD candidate Gabriele Carovano, King’s College London. On 17th June 2020, the EU Commission published a White Paper on

Does Plain Packaging Regulation Reduce Smoking?

Here are some excerpts from a paper which casts doubt on the idea that plain packaging regulation, by itself anyway, reduces smoking: ... we contribute to the existing empirical literature in three ways. First, we use a difference-in-differences (DiD) research design to evaluate the effect of plain packaging. Using data from