This is from the Daily Beast: During his first six months in office, Donald Trump’s top trade official met with a host of companies, trade associations, and industry groups. He also carved out a little time for an unsuspected visitor: an employee of Ralph Nader’s former progressive nonprofit.

This is from Gregory Shaffer, Manfred Elsig and Mark Pollack: The Trump administration threatens to end the world’s trade court, the Appellate Body (AB) of the World Trade Organization (WTO), by blocking the appointment of new AB judges. In doing so, it risks destroying the rules-based trading system

USTR's updated NAFTA negotiating objectives are here.  These are a few new additions that jumped out at me, with some brief comments: --------------------------------------- Government procurement: "Ensure reciprocity in market access opportunities for U.S. goods, services, and suppliers in Canada and Mexico." I'm not sure

One of the important recurring issues among the US problems with the case law of the Appellate Body is the standard of review in anti-dumping disputes. The relevant text was changed at a very late stage of the Uruguay Round negotiations, after most of the texts were closed. Belatedly

The posts by Simon and Inu on the US notifications proposal help to bring to light the important but often ignored issue of notification in WTO agreements. As I've just finished an article on the implementation of the WTO transparency obligation by China, I'd like to

Guest post from Pieter Jan Kuiper, Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Amsterdam: What to do about the US Attack on the Appellate Body? Recently Steve Charnovitz has advanced the idea (IELP blog 3 Nov 2017) that the Appellate Body should use its power

In an earlier post, Simon mentioned that the United States has put forward a new proposal ahead of the MC-11 meeting to “strengthen notification requirements.” The proposal lists a number of Agreements where notification requirements “constitute fundamental elements,” including: Agreement on Agriculture Agreement on Implementation of Article VI of

In EU – PET (Pakistan), the EU Commission began, as expected, its causation analysis by considering  that a causal link existed between subsidized imports and injury to the domestic industry. The Commission then assessed the “effect of other factors” and found that none broke this link. Thereafter, the Commission concluded that

New Zealand's impressive new Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, is on the record as stating that investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) must not be a part of any future trade agreements signed by New Zealand.  In the case of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP, which is apparently now renamed

This is from the Japanese government's list of "Suspended Provisions" in the TPP: 2. Investment Agreement and Investment Authorisation (ISDS applies to these) 9.1 Definitions - suspend “investment agreement” and “investment authorisation” and associated Footnotes (5 - 11) 9.19.1 Submission of Claim to Arbitration - a(