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Simon Lester

No ISDS in U.S. - UK FTA?

Here's a question from Congressman Lloyd Doggett to Ambassador Lighthizer at today's Ways and Means Committee hearing: Doggett: Do you envision in the agreements that you're currently negotiating to maintain the progress that we made in the USMCA with regard to dispute resolution so

Guest Post: The European Commission attempts to rein in BRI subsidies

This is a guest post from trade lawyer Victor Crochet: On 15 June 2020, in Regulation 2020/776, the European Commission decided to countervail financial contributions granted to an Egyptian entity by Chinese public bodies. To reach this conclusion, the Commission explained that the government of the exporting country, in

Who's Going To Pay For Supporting The MPIA?

Paragraph 7 of the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement Pursuant to Article 25 of the DSU says: The participating Members envisage that appeal arbitrators will be provided with appropriate administrative and legal support, which will offer the necessary guarantees of quality and independence, given the nature of the responsibilities involved.

Webinar — USMCA’s Entry into Force: Prospects and Challenges for North American Trade

This is from the Baker Institute for Public Policy (link here): Although most observers agree that the renegotiation process of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was more complicated than it had to be and that the final text is less than perfect, at the end of the day

The Last Appellate Body Report (For Now)

The Appellate Body circulated its report in the Australia - Plain Packaging case today. I've only just started reading, but this passage jumped out at me: 6.48. The sheer volume of the appellants' claims under Article 11 of the DSU in these appellate proceedings is unprecedented.

What Would a Joe Biden Trade Policy Look Like?

It's hard to know when we will get back to the policy (or, at the least, political) debates that are part of U.S. presidential campaigns. We were distracted by a pandemic, and then by protests against systemic racism and related behavior by police, so there hasn'

The First MPIA Appeals?

The WTO has just posted three sets of agreed procedures for arbitration under DSU Article 25, that is to say, procedures for appeals through the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA). The cases involved are Canada - Sale of Wine (DS537), Costa Rica - Avocados (DS524), and Canada - Aircraft

Is the Trump Administration Just Being Legal Realist?

I was intrigued by something former USTR general counsel Stephen Vaughn said in his Trade Talks podcast last November: there's an old school of law that goes back to the 20s at Yale called Legal Realism, and the Legal Realists were people who believed that what matters is

Another MPIA Arbitrator Nomination

This is an announcement from New Zealand last week: The New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade today announced Dr Penelope Ridings as New Zealand’s nomination for the pool of arbitrators established under the WTO interim appeals arrangement. The Ministry welcomes the Cabinet decision to nominate Dr Ridings

Theorizing Precedent in International Law

In light of the discussions of precedent in the previous two posts, I thought it might be worth posting something from a piece by law professor Harlan Cohen entitled Theorizing Precedent in International Law (I think he has more coming on this issue): The ingredients discussed in Part III—sources,