Today, the Canadian Supreme Court decided the Comeau case, involving provincial barriers on trade in beer. This decision could have created a Canadian "single market" (to borrow a phrase), but the justices decided on a narrower approach. For anyone who follows WTO jurisprudence or debates about policy space/

The legal texts of the EU - Singapore Free Trade Agreement and the EU - Singapore Investment Protection Agreement are now available here. A European Commission press release related to these agreements, and also covering the EU - Japan Economic Partnership Agreement, explains the next steps as follows: The Commission today presented the

China already made the argument that the Section 232 steel/aluminum tariffs are actually safeguard measures, both in a Safeguards Agreement consultations request and a DSU consultations request. Now both the EU and India have filed Safeguards Agreement consultations requests based on this same argument. The EU says the following

This is from Krzysztof Pelc's review of Dani Rodrik's new book: In the case of trade, one such wrinkle, long overlooked, comes from economic models’ focus on the “average citizen.” And while trade agreements may indeed be beneficial to the “average Canadian,” no such animal exists

Is it worth responding to things President Trump says about trade? I'm not sure, but I'm doing it anyway, very briefly. The transcript of his remarks from today is here. Feel free to add your own comments. Trump: THE PRESIDENT:  As you are all aware, China

The New WTO Law of Market Economy Status for China Steve Charnovitz 12 April 2018 In this era of China bashing, WTO watchers should be reminded of one area of WTO law where the United States and the EU continue to engage in WTO-illegal behavior. That is, the unjustified

This is the legal basis of China's WTO complaint against the U.S. Section 232 tariffs, filed on April 5: The measures at issue, operating separately or together, appear to be inconsistent with the United States' obligations under: * Articles XIX:1(a), XIX:2 of the GATT

One of the most significant complaints made by the US in its Section 301 investigation of China's IP practices is the claim that China conditions permission for foreign investment on transfer of technology.  However, in the US' recent WTO complaint against China's IP practices, the

This is from Kathleen Claussen: Select videos from the 112th Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law (ASIL) held last week in Washington, DC are now available on the ASIL website (https://www.asil.org/resources/video/2018-annual-meeting).  These include video from a session on the

The $50 billion tariffs proposed by the Trump Administration put China into a “Catch-22” position. If China doesn’t retaliate and only follows the proper dispute settlement procedure to challenge them in the WTO, then it has to wait at least 2 years before the US measures are finally