Trachtman

We can lay the blame for Doha’s delay at lots of doorsteps. But fundamentally, we would hope that if the deal were rich enough, if it improved welfare enough, people would find a way to agree.             Economists know that dismantling barriers to trade makes the world better off:  this

Today's IHT has an interesting letter from Pascal Lamy to the trade ministers.  He includes the following: The pity in all of this is that what is on the table now constitutes greater progress in rolling back farm subsidies and tariffs than anything seen before in global negotiations.

The GATS today does not contain a direct requirement that domestic regulatory measures be the least trade restrictive (Article VI:5 combines this test with a nullification or impairment requirement).  This may be contrasted with Article 2.2 of the TBT Agreement and Article 2.2 of the SPS Agreement.

It appears that the last gasp of hope for some kind of Doha deal this year has expired.  It is curious that the G-8 expressed commitment last week, and then its ministers declined to deliver the goods in Geneva.

This from Mark Stratman, at the suggestion of John Jackson: The WTO General Council has made a decision to derestrict all GATT 1947 documents.  This is an important step towards greater transparency, and greatly reduces some of the confusion about what documents might still be restricted from the GATT days.

This was posted by Roger Alford on Opinio Juris: Buxbaum on Transnational Regulatory Litigationby Roger AlfordHannah Buxbaum has just posted on SSRN an interesting article on "Transnational Regulatory Litigation." You can download the document here. In particular she includes an illuminating section on global class actions. Here is

A guest blog from Lan Yuo: On 3 July, the Council issued the finalised text of a Regulation imposing a definitive anti-dumping duty on potassium chloride from Belarus and Russia. (/content/files/en/06/st10/st10609-en06.pdf) Generally speaking, it is not a high profile (i.e. economically or politically

From Inside U.S. Trade: U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said at a July 1 press conference ministers had failed to "find closure or even narrow the range" of differences on any aspects of how sensitive and special agriculture products should be designated and treated. "The

Today's FT reports that the WTO negotiations are bogged down.  Not a surprise, and it reinforces a kind of facile comparison to the Uruguay Round.  Oh yes, agricultural brinksmanship again.  The parties are playing chicken and the one with the most to lose will swerve at the last