These are some of new information technology (IT) products covered by the newly struck expanded version of the WTO IT Agreement.  This is what the WTO head said:  “Annual trade in these 201 products is valued at over $1.3 trillion per year, and accounts for approximately 7% of total

Australia will have mandatory country of origin labelling for food soon: Australia will introduce mandatory country-of-origin food labeling from 2016, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Tuesday, a move given impetus by a hepatitis outbreak earlier in the year blamed on contaminated berries from China. Under the new rules, food

It should be obvious to long-time readers that I am concerned about policy space and regulatory autonomy under trade and investment agreements.  However, I have doubts that the "right to regulate" is a good way to describe the issue: Talk of "rights" can be unproductive when

This is from Canada's Premiers (a group made up of Canada’s 13 provincial and territorial Premiers.) Premiers also announced the coming into force of an improved Person-to-Government dispute settlement process under the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT). The new dispute process includes the introduction of monetary penalties

This is from Lorand Bartels, in the latest AJIL: The Chapeau of the General Exceptions in the WTO GATT and GATS Agreements: A Reconstruction ... Conclusions This article argues that the Appellate Body has misunderstood the chapeau and that, in particular, there is no analytic, structural, or even thematic difference between

Let's say California is experiencing a serious drought. And let's say companies are bottling and selling municipal water from California. And let's say that the price set by the government for the purchase of this water is low enough that it contributes to consumption

This is from Inside US Trade: In Tie Vote, ITC Find U.S. Producers Are Injured By Chinese Tire Imports In a victory for the United Steelworkers (USW) union, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) on Tuesday (July 14) issued a final determination that domestic tire producers are being

The conventional wisdom, delivered before anyone could really ponder the fine print of the Greek debt deal, is that Tsipras surrendered to the creditors in a humiliating defeat.  His referendum and prior tenacity in negotiations proved futile,according to the predominant account that has emerged in the media and the

This is from a submission by a number of WTO Members who are skeptical of allowing non-violation and situation complaints -- through the removal of the current moratorium on those complaints -- under the TRIPS Agreement: Non-violation and situation complaints are unnecessary to protect any balance of rights and obligations