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CETA: Limits on Domestic Wine Preferences

From a Canadian news report: A trade deal between Canada and the European Union could restrict Canada’s wine sales by limiting the number of privately run outlets selling domestic products, if a leaked document turns out to be close to the finalized treaty. A German website posted the 521-page
Simon Lester 26 Aug 2014 1 min read

Barcelona Workshop on Global Governance

Call for Papers: 2015 Barcelona Workshop on Global Governance: The Public and the Private in Global Governance IBEI (Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals) and ESADEgeo (ESADE Business School’s Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics) are organizing the third edition of the Barcelona Workshop on Global Governance, an international workshop
Trachtman 26 Aug 2014 1 min read

Is the Appellate Body Trying To Discourage DSU Article 11 Appeals?

I haven't crunched the numbers on this, but it certainly feels as though DSU Article 11 appeals have increased in recent years.  Yet almost all of them get rejected.  This seems like a strange state of affairs.  Why pursue a course that is virtually certain to fail? In
Simon Lester 26 Aug 2014 1 min read

CETA, ISDS, and Religious Discrimination: The Burqa Ban

In the comments of this post, we talked about the scope of the "targeted discrimination" aspects of the fair and equitable treatment obligation in the leaked CETA investment chapter. The relevant language is as follows: Article X.9: Treatment of Investors and of Covered Investments ... 2. A Party
Simon Lester 25 Aug 2014 1 min read

Legal Aspects of Domestic Economic Integration: Canadian Reform Proposals

This is from a paper by some Canadian business groups on promoting internal free trade within Canada through reform of Canada's Agreement on Internal Trade: A more effective and efficient dispute resolution mechanism should include ... a domestic equivalent of investor-state dispute settlement, ... . Investor-state dispute settlement normally grants foreign
Simon Lester 20 Aug 2014 2 min read

APEC’s Complementarity to the WTO via Plurilateral Agreements

Now that the WTO members failed to adopt the protocol on the Trade Facilitation (TF) Agreement, APEC members try to fill in the gap.  APEC Leaders instructed their officials to work toward the APEC TF Agreement between APEC members and other WTO members. The Chair of the APEC Committee on
Sungjoon Cho 18 Aug 2014 1 min read

Russia’s Account of Negotiation History: Reason for Deletion Further Explained

On the question raised in my last post – what was the reason for deleting from Russia’s accession protocol the sentence on non-derogation of its rights under the WTO Agreement – I have now located further explanation in Annex C-9 to the Panel Report in Rare Earths, INTEGRATED EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF
Julia Qin 18 Aug 2014 3 min read

What Should the U.S. Judge in the Argentina Debt Case Have Done?

I'm still trying to sort out what I think should happen in the Argentina debt crisis case.  I gather that a lot of people are mad at the U.S. judge who prevented Argentina from making payments to those creditors who had agreed to restructure the debt, allowing
Simon Lester 18 Aug 2014 2 min read

Negotiation History and Interpretation of WTO Accession Protocols

As indicated in my previous post, South Korea, a third party in the Rare Earths appeal, advocated referencing negotiation history in the interpretation of Paragraph 11.3 of China’s Accession Protocol. Para. 2.7.7of the AB Report reads in part: In Korea's view, the interpretation pursuant
Julia Qin 15 Aug 2014 4 min read

CETA, Investment Obligations, and Exceptions

With each attempt to clarify the "minimum standard of treatment" in investment obligations, the scope becomes less clear to me.  Here's what the leaked CETA text says (page 158): Article X.9: Treatment of Investors and of Covered Investments 1. Each Party shall accord in its
Simon Lester 15 Aug 2014 2 min read

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Tracking Goods Exports under the Trump Administration's Trade Policies

My sense is that one of the reasons some traditionally pro-trade members of Congress have continued to support Trump's trade policies, despite misgivings they may have about tariffs, is because they hope these policies will pry open foreign markets, leading to increased US exports.
07 May 2026 8 min read

Could Congress Extend the USMCA for Another Term?

People have been assuming that the decision on whether to extend the USMCA for another term is up to President Trump, but based on the language of the USMCA related to the upcoming joint review, could Congress actually have the power to make this decision on its own?
04 May 2026 4 min read

Is There No Going Back on Trade? What Is the Path Forward? A Response to Lighthizer

Former U.S. Trade Rep. Bob Lighthizer has a new essay in Foreign Affairs, and I have some thoughts. I'm going to start with his brief big picture points on the direction of U.S. trade policy, and then go through a couple of the specific concepts he emphasizes.
27 Apr 2026 6 min read

The Section 301 Excess Capacity Investigation Needs Less Madness, More Method

Shortly after the Supreme Court ruled President Trump’s emergency tariffs under IEEPA  unconstitutional, the administration scrambled to rebuild its tariff wall. While the announcement of Section 122 tariffs immediately following the ruling will provide a temporary patch, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office quickly began to utilize another
24 Apr 2026 6 min read

War Tariffs

This is a co-authored post by Kathleen Claussen and Tim Meyer. Last week, President Trump announced that the United States would be imposing new tariffs of 50 percent of the value of any product coming from any country that sells weapons or provides military aid to Iran. Some commentators questioned
14 Apr 2026 5 min read

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