Spring break is upon us at NYU and I'm making a big push to finish an essay on the design of a multilateral investment court along the lines of the initiative that Canada and the EU are now undertaking.  One of the big transitional issues is this:  since

This is from CTV: The [Canadian] federal government is launching consultations on a potential free trade agreement with China. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang announced the beginning of exploratory discussions in September. Now the government says it is seeking input from individuals, businesses, civil society organizations,

Here is former UN Ambassador John Bolton writing about the DSU in the WSJ: Agreed to during the Uruguay Round of world trade talks in 1994, the DSU has had some successes. But it is often criticized for failing to deter violations of the WTO’s substantive trade provisions and

Many of us heaved a sigh of relief when Philip Morris lost its challenge to Uruguay's tobacco plain packaging regulations. In the euphoria of the moment, it was easy to ignore the unpleasant fact of a dissent.  Yet much of the value to Philip Morris in attacking, both

According to some sources, China has charted out a $300 billion plan to become nearly self-sufficient by 2025 in a range of important industries, from planes to computer chips to electric cars as it looks to kick-start its next stage of economic development. This so-called “Made in China 2025” program

An investor operates a facility in what has become one of the most dangerous places in the Middle East; despite the efforts of the host state's army, terrorist attacks on the facility continue.  According to a recent ICSID decision, the failure of Egypt to stop terrorist attacks on

It has been reported that Korea is considering bringing a WTO case against China over the trade retaliations China has taken in the wake of Korea's decision to install the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. However, I think this is unlikely to happen as the Korean

If you are looking for indications as to how the Trump administration trade policy team might approach changes to WTO dispute settlement, this new report by Terry Stewart and Elizabeth Drake, entitled "How the WTO Undermines U.S. Trade Remedy Enforcement," might be a good place to start.

In my previous post I took issue with what appears to be the basic premise of super-arbitrator Kaufmann-Kohler's approach to creating a multilateral investment court: because of the overriding importance of maximum enforcement instruments for investors, a multilateral tribunal can't deviate too much from "arbitration&

Currently the European Commission and Canada are at the forefront of an initiative to replace traditional investor-state arbitration with a multilateral investment court.  The latter would likely include a true appellate mechanism, serious rules on arbitrator ethics and against conflict of interest, judges who are qualified in public international law