This is from law professor Alan Sykes: The prohibited subsidies categories are unsound As noted, import substitution subsidies and export subsidies are automatically “specific” and prohibited under WTO rules (ASCM Article 3). Neither prohibition makes much economic sense. Import substitution subsidies are those “contingent (in whole or in part) upon

If an Appellate Body report falls in the woods, and no one is there to hear it, does it have any precedential value?  I ask because the Appellate Body issued a report yesterday, and no one seemed to notice.  Usually, there is at least some brief reporting by Reuters and

Here's an excerpt from a paper by U. of Chicago law prof Adam Chilton: Given the limited interest in—and evidence of—the investment benefits of BITs, it is worth reconsidering why the United States actively pursued a BITs program for three decades. I argue that the dominant

In the Wall Street Journal, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former Secretaries of State, have damned with faint praise the strategy of diplomacy pursued by the Obama Administration with respect to Iran and its nuclear program.  Their bottom line: unless there is an effective grand strategy to address Iran'

The more I read Appellate Body Reports, the more I notice (not infrequently) that  when really difficult interpretative issues are at stake, then don’t count on the Appellate Body to make things easier for you. In other words, my impression is that the Appellate Body has developed a series

A recent story in the New York Post http://bit.ly/1NK55m1 is making a rather sensational claim that Iran's official statement in Farsi about the deal last week on sanctions and nuclear proliferation contradicts in essential respects the State Department's fact sheet, which I discussed

Last month, Tom Cotton and 46 of his colleagues in the Senate tried to run interference with the Administration's nuclear negotiations with Iran, addressing a letter to the leadership in Tehran that suggested Congress could destroy any legal certainty in an eventual deal with Iran, if not reversing

Here's more from EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom: For all these reasons, I believe the question about putting investment in TTIP is not whether we should do it but how we can do it right. Can we design a new form of investment arbitration that keeps the benefits

This is from a recent speech by EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom: Let me start by stating what is perhaps obvious. The Commission's assessment is that we need to negotiate rules on investment protection and ISDS in TTIP. I know that some members of this house believe otherwise,