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Memo to the Trump Administration: The Sunset Clause is a Lost Cause

Here's a tweet from Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star: Trudeau says he wanted to meet with Trump to resolve NAFTA, but Pence told him that he couldn't meet with Trump unless Canada accepted an auto-termination "sunset clause" in the deal. He said Canada
Simon Lester 31 May 2018 1 min read

Farewell Speech of Appellate Body Member Ricardo Ramírez-Hernández

You can read the full farewell speech by Appellate Body Member Ricardo Ramírez-Hernández here. There's a lot of good stuff in it. This is an excerpt, with some comments from me thrown in here and there: Now I'm going to share with you some thoughts about
Simon Lester 30 May 2018 9 min read

Tony Blair on "What do to about Brexit?"

Here is something Tony Blair said on Fareed Zakaria's TV show last week-end: ZAKARIA: What do do about Brexit? BLAIR: Well, I would still like to see it changed. I mean, I think that the truth is there is no answer to the fundamental dilemma. So in this
Simon Lester 30 May 2018 2 min read

Will the U.S. - China Trade Deal Violate MFN?

This is from the FT: Washington is pressing Beijing to enter into multiyear contracts to buy US agricultural and energy imports as part of a broader trade deal aimed at reducing the $337bn bilateral trade deficit with China. But the move could mean taking Chinese business away from key US
Simon Lester 27 May 2018 2 min read

The EU General Data Protection Regulation

The GDPR is coming into force soon and I'm trying to sort out the consequences in general and for this blog in particular. With regard to this blog, over 2,000 people have signed up for email notifications, and presumably some of those people are from an EU
Simon Lester 24 May 2018 1 min read

EU – PET (Pakistan): The Appellate Body confirms the validity of the traditional "break the causal link" approach

In a previous post, I indicated that Pakistan lodged an appeal  regarding the "break the causal link" approach adopted by the European Commission in  EU – PET (Pakistan).   In this case, the EU Commission began, as usual, its causation analysis by considering first  that a causal link existed between
Marc Benitah 24 May 2018 1 min read

Is Trump Backing Off China?

This is from an article in the Washington Post: Even before the overnight developments, Trump supporters — and those cheerleading his get-tough approach to trade with China — began reckoning with the likelihood that the president is abandoning the cause. Trump all but confirmed he’s backing away from a showdown with
Simon Lester 23 May 2018 1 min read

The Future of the Airbus-Boeing Dispute

This is from Bloomberg: Airbus SE is ready to tell the World Trade Organization that the threat posed to Boeing Co. by its most ambitious program ever, the double-decker A380 jetliner, is so marginal that any U.S.-led sanctions against the European Union over illegal aid should be minimal.
Simon Lester 23 May 2018 2 min read

Will the U.S. - Gambling Dispute Return?

Many people seemed to enjoy the U.S. - Gambling WTO dispute back in its heyday. Is it possible a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling could revive it? This is from Law360: The U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision giving states a green light to legalize sports
Simon Lester 18 May 2018 2 min read

G2 Conference on Resolving Disputes in International Economic Law

From the IIEL and the Graduate Institute: July 11, 2018 ◊ Georgetown Law, Washington, DC Download the Summer 2018 G2 Program RSVP Now Join Georgetown’s Institute of International Economic Law and the Graduate Institute, Geneva’s Center for Trade and Economic Integration for a conference on resolving disputes in international
Simon Lester 18 May 2018 1 min read

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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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