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

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

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

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

Comments by Steve Charnovitz on US Department of Commerce Section 232 Investigation of Automobiles, DOC-2018-0002 June 8, 2018 As I noted in my April 26, 2017 comments on the 232 Steel investigation, “the idea that imports of goods, services, or capital could undermine national security is farfetched”[1]

Frank Garcia sends the following: "Thanks to Anthea Roberts for enhancing UNCITRAL's own transparency efforts regarding the recent working group meeting in New York, and posting such a treasure trove of State comments.  I and a team of Boston College Law students were also in New York

As explained in a previous post, we have put together four posts that compile the most relevant quotes from the first two meetings of the UNCITRAL Working Group sessions on states’ concerns about investor-state dispute settlement. To facilitate discussions about the desirability of reforms and their potential nature, we

This is from Canada's consultations request on the Section 232 tariffs: In addition, Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and its associated regulations appear to be "as such" inconsistent with Articles I:1 and II:1 of the GATT 1994 and does not