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New Position: Postdoctoral Fellow for Project on the Belt & Road Initiative

The Singapore Management University (SMU) is seeking a post-doctoral fellow, in a position jointly sponsored by SMU’s School of Law and School of Social Sciences. This position is on an exciting new interdisciplinary research project studying the interplay between infrastructure building and institutional building under China’s Belt &
Henry Gao 02 Jul 2018 1 min read

How To Negotiate Lower Tariffs

This is from Axios: Axios has obtained a leaked draft of a Trump administration bill — ordered by the president himself — that would declare America’s abandonment of fundamental World Trade Organization rules. Why it matters: The draft legislation is stunning. The bill essentially provides Trump a license to raise U.
Simon Lester 01 Jul 2018 1 min read

Is Section 232 Unconstitutional?

This is from a recently filed compaint at the U.S. Court of International Trade: Plaintiffs American Institute for International Steel, Inc. (“AIIS”), Sim-Tex LP (“Sim-Tex”), and Kurt Orban Partners, LLC (“Orban”), by and through their attorneys, hereby submit their complaint in this action seeking a declaratory judgment that section
Simon Lester 27 Jun 2018 1 min read

The Timing of Appellate Body Report Circulation

At the last DSB meeting, the U.S. offered a detailed criticism of the Appellate Body's recent practice of taking longer than 90 days to circulate its reports. It's too long to quote the whole thing, but here is a part of it: 5. STATEMENT BY
Simon Lester 27 Jun 2018 3 min read

The Second Canada Agreement on Internal Trade Appellate Report

A couple years ago, I blogged about the first appellate decision under Canada's Agreement on Internal Trade, which was on dairy products. The second decision has just been circulated, this time on beer. (The Canadian Free Trade Agreement recently replaced the AIT, so aside from any ongoing AIT
Simon Lester 22 Jun 2018 2 min read

Non-Violation Claims in the Steel/Aluminum WTO Complaints

Here are all six WTO consultations requests filed so far against the U.S. Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum products: U.S. - Measures on Steel and Aluminium (DS552) June 12, 2018 Norway U.S. - Measures on Steel and Aluminium (DS551) June 5, 2018 Mexico U.S.
Simon Lester 20 Jun 2018 1 min read

Tariff Threats as a Negotiating Tactic

Josh Barro describes Trump's approach to negotiations as follows: Donald Trump has a negotiating tactic he really likes: Threaten to do something someone else will really hate, and then offer to stop if they give you what you want. ... One of his tactics on trade, for example, is
Simon Lester 17 Jun 2018 4 min read

The Use of Object and Purpose by Trade and Investment Adjudicators

This is from Graham Cook: For those interested in matters of treaty interpretation and legal reasoning, here is a new paper on "The Use of Object and Purpose by Trade and Investment Adjudicators: Convergence without Interaction". It analogizes the practice of WTO and ISDS tribunals to the story
Simon Lester 15 Jun 2018 1 min read

Investment Arbitrators Weigh In on GATT Article XXI

This is from the 2016 Devas v. India Award (some footnotes omitted): 219. Indeed, it is well established by judgments of the International Court of Justice (the “ICJ”) and investment arbitration awards that, unless a treaty contains specific wording granting full discretion to the State to determine what it considers
Simon Lester 12 Jun 2018 1 min read

The G7 Countries Should Accept Trump's Proposal to Negotiate Total Free Trade

This is from Trump's press conference at the G7 yesterday: Q Mr. President, you said that this was a positive meeting, but from the outside, it seemed quite contentious. Did you get any indication from your interlocutors that they were going to make any concessions to you? And
Simon Lester 10 Jun 2018 3 min read

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International Economic Law and Policy Blog

International Economic Law and Policy Blog

Expert commentary on the law, politics and economics of international trade and investment

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Is There No Going Back on Trade? What Is the Path Forward? A Response to Lighthizer

Former U.S. Trade Rep. Bob Lighthizer has a new essay in Foreign Affairs, and I have some thoughts. I'm going to start with his brief big picture points on the direction of U.S. trade policy, and then go through a couple of the specific concepts he emphasizes.
27 Apr 2026 6 min read

The Section 301 Excess Capacity Investigation Needs Less Madness, More Method

Shortly after the Supreme Court ruled President Trump’s emergency tariffs under IEEPA  unconstitutional, the administration scrambled to rebuild its tariff wall. While the announcement of Section 122 tariffs immediately following the ruling will provide a temporary patch, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office quickly began to utilize another
24 Apr 2026 6 min read

War Tariffs

This is a co-authored post by Kathleen Claussen and Tim Meyer. Last week, President Trump announced that the United States would be imposing new tariffs of 50 percent of the value of any product coming from any country that sells weapons or provides military aid to Iran. Some commentators questioned
14 Apr 2026 5 min read

USMCA Review and Extension Predictions

When the idea of an expiration clause was suggested during the NAFTA renegotiation, I was against it from the start, and Inu and I wrote a pretty critical piece about it at the time. A review is great, we said, let's definitely have reviews, and there are plenty of ways to do that.
08 Apr 2026 5 min read

The Section 301 Surge Continues: Investigating the Adoption/Enforcement/Administration of Forced Labor Import Bans

This Section 301 investigation intends to pressure all sixty named trade partners (even, inexplicably, including Canada and Mexico) to adopt similar enforcement procedures. This announcement is highly problematic for the four reasons I address below.
16 Mar 2026 4 min read

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