Monday (February 15, 2016) , a new investor-state hearing began here in Toronto. This was the opening of the Windstream case. Though I seldom comment on these proceedings, especially as I’ve participated in quite a number of these investor-state cases, and their hearings, this opening, at least with

CFR Senior Fellow, and former USTR official, Tom Bollyky makes the case for the tobacco carveout from ISDS in the TPP. Here's an excerpt, but read the whole thing: The Obama Administration has done itself a disservice by not making the basis for the tobacco carve-out clearer.

A couple days ago, I briefly expressed skepticism about the economic estimates being offered up related to the TPP (see also here). Working independently, but with similar ideological priors, here's my Cato colleague Dan Ikenson offering more detailed thoughts: With apologies to my trade economist friends, anyone who

This is from economist, and trade skeptic (to some extent), Dani Rodrik: The bottom line is that neither side’s models generate numbers reliable enough on which a case for or against the TPP can be made. I'm a lot more pro-trade than Dani Rodrik is, but

In India: India's telecoms regulator has blocked Facebook's Free Basics internet service app as part of a ruling in favour of net neutrality. The scheme offered free access to a limited number of websites. However, it was opposed by supporters of net neutrality who argued that

In my daily trade news reading, I was surprised to come across this sentence: [New Zealand] has not lost a dispute at the WTO in 20 years. Can that really be true, I thought?  Luckily, there's a web site that tracks these things, so I looked up the

From TradeLab: POSITION VACANT Project Coordinator, TradeLab – International Economic Law (Trade and/or Investment) Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, together with the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, the University of Arizona, Qatar University School of Law and a number of international partners, is

Can anyone enlighten me on how the obligation to eliminate export subsidies on agricultural products in articles 6 and 7 of the Ministerial decision on Export Competition  WT/MIN(15)/45 — WT/L/980  (https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/mc10_e/l980_e.htm  ) fits into

From a post at the EFILA blog: An investor in a Host State court is automatically an alien, advancing a claim in a foreign court automatically places the investor at a disadvantage of itself. This seems like an assertion that could be studied empirically. How are aliens treated in domestic

There's an interesting NAFTA Chapter 11 claim going on related to wind energy. As Lise Johnson explains in Investment Arbitration Reporter: The NAFTA Chapter 11 case relates to an offshore wind energy project being developed as part of Ontario’s Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) Program. Windstream claims to