This is from the FT: Washington has warned Brussels against granting China ‘market economy status’, saying the long-sought trade concession could hamper efforts to prevent Chinese companies flooding US and European markets with unfairly cheap goods. ... US officials have warned EU counterparts that granting Beijing MES would amount to

In various papers I've written, I'm sure I have made the point that prior to the GATT, world tariffs were around 40%, and the GATT/WTO brought them down from there to much lower levels.  I suspect others have done the same. But Chad Bown and

Investment Arbitration Reporter has the scoop: A tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration has issued a decision dismissing a high-profile case between cigarette multinational Philip Morris and the Commonwealth of Australia. The PCA website indicates that a Decision on Jurisdiction and Admissibility was issued on December 17, 2015.

Last week, in a post about a systemic issue involving the calculation of the level of nullification or impairment in an Article 22.6 proceeding, Joost said:  "as systemic as this finding is, 22.6 arbitration reports cannot be appealed. Is this, however, not the kind of finding one

... but then I see this: More than 50 members of the World Trade Organisation on Wednesday concluded the biggest tariff-reduction deal in almost two decades, eliminating restrictions on the $1.3tn trade of 201 IT products. Wednesday’s expansion of the 1996 Information Technology Agreement will increase global gross

I was saddened to hear of the passing of Justice Florentino Feliciano, one of the members of the original WTO Appellate and a distinguished international jurist.  Toy brought his brilliant and razor-sharp mind to whatever task he had and was at his best in harmonizing differing bodies of international

Here's something from an op-ed by Senator, and Presidential hopeful, Ted Cruz, making the case for legislation he is co-sponsoring: ... as scientists and investors abandon the U.S., the FDA continues to prevent life-saving drugs from coming into the country. Take, for example, the multiple-

This is from the Washington Post, in the context of an article about how Donald Trump's recent statements are affecting his business activities: In the longer term, however, Trump could face problems. There have already been several worrisome harbingers for the Republican presidential candidate. This week, a major

The global climate change conference in Paris has adopted the draft of an international treaty aimed at transforming the world's fossil fuel-driven economy within decades and slowing the pace of global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius. Many consider this text as “historic” and  according to

The December 7 retaliation decision in US - COOL includes a finding of great systemic importance to the trading system. When a country is the victim of a WTO violation, what “damages” are “recoverable”? We all know that the WTO never awards cash. The closest it gets is to put a