From the WSJ: Donald Trump is expected to name Robert Lighthizer, a former trade official under President Ronald Reagan, to head the U.S. Trade Representative office, the first in a final push of appointments anticipated this week as Mr. Trump fills the remaining senior government vacancies in the run-

I'm not a fan of letting foreign policy influence trade policy (which is one of the reasons I prefer multilateral trade liberalization to bilateral or regional trade deals, which are particularly susceptible), but there is no question that it sometimes does. In this regard, I often come across

The Graduate Institute’s Centre for Trade and Economic Integration and Georgetown University’s Institute of International Economic Law are proud to present a call for papers for the Annual Conference on WTO Law, to be held in Geneva from June 9-10, 2017. For details, please see the announcement

From a USTR press release today: The Obama Administration announced today that the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) is taking action against the European Union’s (EU) unfair trade practices that discriminate against U.S. beef imports.  Acting on the request of the U.S. beef industry,

This from SIEL/JIEL/OUP: The deadline for entering the 2016-2017 SIEL/JIEL/OUP Essay Prize competition is fast approaching, and authors meeting the stated conditions are warmly encouraged to send their submission by 15 JANUARY 2017. For further details: http://www.sielnet.org/essayprize

Last week, Joel had a post entitled "US Presidential Power to Terminate Trade Agreements," in which he discussed the difficulties that a U.S. President would have in ending U.S. participation in existing trade agreements, without Congressional consent. His post may have been reassuring to some people

In light of all of the recent talk about the U.S. adopting a VAT-ish tax reform, I thought it was worth revisiting a fundamental question. Everyone seems to be operating under the assumption that a VAT is covered by GATT Article II:2(a) and Article III, and

China's WTO complaint related to certain anti-dumping methodologies used by the US Department of Commerce is here (the parallel complaint against the EU is here).  For now, I'm not going to get into the specific methodologies or AD Agreement legal obligations, but instead will focus

Julian Ku and John Yoo have an op ed in the LA Times, arguing that the President cannot withdraw the U.S. from NAFTA or the WTO on his own.  Their writing, but probably not their thinking, conflates the issue of withdrawal from the treaty, which the President arguably can

In the latest episode of infliction of suffering on Greece, its Eurozone creditors have halted the recently agreed debt relief plan because the Tsipras government has decided to provide emergency payments to the country's most vulnerable pensioners. The widespread and severe suffering imposed on the Greek people by