Trachtman

See Claude Barfield's article explaining the conflicting spins being put on the bipartisan trade compromise on FTAs and labor.

See the nice post by Peter Spiro at Opinio Juris.

The USTR has now published a fact sheet providing a bit more detail on the new deal between the administraiton and congress (hat tip to Julian Ku at Opinio Juris).  The idea is to make the 5 core principles subject to the same dispute settlement as commercial obligations, but (i)

News reports today are filled with stories of the deal between democrats and republicans regarding trade and labor/environment.  One particularly detailed story is here.  According to the report, ranking republican member of the House Ways and Means Committee McCreary says the deal won't be applicable to WTO

Brazil has issued a compulsory license for the medicine Efavirenz, an important anti-retroviral.  See the story here.  Brazil had negotiated with Merck for a couple of years, and failed to reach agreement on price.  Apparently, Brazil would have been satisfied with the same price charged in Thailand, but Merck felt

From Peggy McGuinness: International Law Weekend 2007 Towards a New Vision of International Law Call for Panel Proposals The post-9/11 era has been one of great contestation for international law.  Scholars and practitioners debate basic questions about the content and nature of public international law and how the political

Well, I spent the afternoon at a conference at Harvard today, where Jagdish Bhagwati was to debate Alan Blinder about Offshoring/Outsourcing. Actually, their biggest disagreement was about the name of the phenomenon. Blinder uses offshoring to refer to country effects, as opposed to firm effects, whereas Bhagwati just uses

According to a recent announcement from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and WorldPublicOpinion.org, publics think globalization is helpful, but worry about the effects on labor and the environment: Majorities around the world believe economic globalization and international trade benefit national economies, companies, and consumers.  But many think trade

Chantal Thomas of Minnesota and I are organizing a conference on Developing Countries in the WTO Legal System.  The conference is inspired by Bob Hudec's 1987 book, and the manuscript updated edition that I have been working on.  For conference information see the site:  http://www.law.umn.

Eric Posner has an op ed in yesterday's WSJ, saying that human rights don't do any good, and suggesting that the whole project be abandoned.  While there is lots to argue with, I wanted to note one point here. Posner suggests that the advancement of well-being