Sungjoon Cho

The Appellate Body (AB) report on the “United States –Countervailing Duty Measures on Certain Products from China” (WT/DS437/AB/R) is out.  Interestingly, the AB reversed some of panel’s findings.  Two reversals stand out: the de facto specificity and adverse facts available.  Here go relevant parts of the

Today’s NY Times article (“Solar Rises in Malaysia During Trade Wars Over Panels”) covers a recent solar panel manufacturing boom in Malaysia, due in no small part to the U.S. trade remedies against Chinese solar panels.  The Commerce Department is mulling imposing tariffs on all solar panels “assembled”

The recent “Asian Economic Integration Monitor” (November 2014) published by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) calls for “unilateral multilateralization” of various trade preferences from preexisting FTAs.  Obviously, this will be a nirvana to most global businesses traversing global value chains, if it ever transpires.  Then, they could avoid enormous transaction

Here is the compliance (DSU Article 21.5) panel report as well as a summary of findings.  Overall, the panel followed the Appellate Body’s approach in the original COOL dispute.  The panel concluded that the amended COOL measure actually “has increased the original COOL measure's detrimental impact

The recent deal (settlement) between the United States and Brazil to end the long-standing cotton dispute has stirred up (old) controversy in the nature of WTO remedies, and more broadly the nature of the WTO itself: is the WTO a mere “contract” or something more than that, say, a “legal

Now that the WTO members failed to adopt the protocol on the Trade Facilitation (TF) Agreement, APEC members try to fill in the gap.  APEC Leaders instructed their officials to work toward the APEC TF Agreement between APEC members and other WTO members. The Chair of the APEC Committee on

Chad Brown and Kara Reynolds have released an interesting study on the trade stakes (dollar value) under the WTO dispute settlement system. (“WTO trade disputes, big and small”).  While their data confirms, intuitively, that WTO members are likely to litigate on big ticket items, such as the Boeing-Airbus dispute, the

Well, I am not talking about two lovers, but the currently pending negotiation on the “Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).”  The United States and the European Union, representing the world’s most advanced (and perhaps most open) economies, still cannot get a trade deal done between themselves.  As we

This is related to Simon’s earlier post. Matthew Dalton from Wall Street Journal raised an interesting hypothesis regarding the controversial investor-state dispute settlement mechanism under the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).  What if decisions of an investment tribunal and a domestic court on the same subject-matter diverge or

Our co-blogger Bryan Mercurio published an excellent policy brief at the World Health Organization (WHO) Bulletin. (“International investment agreements and public health: neutralizing a threat through treaty drafting”) This is his conclusion: “International investment agreements need not pose a threat to legitimate health measures. The addition of limitation clauses such