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CETA Dispute Settlement: Reference to WTO Jurisprudence

From Article 14.10 of the leaked CETA text (page 474): 5. The panel shall interpret the provisions referred to in Article 14.2 in accordance with customary rules of interpretation of public international law, including those set out in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. The panel
Simon Lester 15 Aug 2014 1 min read

CETA Text: The Treatment of Water

A fairly recent version of the CETA text has been leaked.  The document date is August 1, 2014.  No doubt there is some legal "scrubbing" still to do, and perhaps some actual negotiating as well, but this text seems pretty advanced, and thus ready for blogging.  I'
Simon Lester 15 Aug 2014 2 min read

Guest Post: Russian Sanctions, Polish Apples and the EU’s Litigation Strategy

This is a guest post from Boris Rigod, who has a Ph.D. from the EUI and is currently a law clerk at the Berlin Regional Court Poland announced its intention to initiate WTO proceedings against Russia over its import prohibition on Polish apples. The ban is Russia’s reaction
Simon Lester 14 Aug 2014 3 min read

A Lost Opportunity: Thoughts on the Result of China’s Appeal in Rare Earths

China lost its appeal in Rare Earths last week. The main issue on appeal: the availability of GATT XX exceptions to paragraph 11.3 of China’s Accession Protocol (AP), which contains China’s WTO-plus commitment to eliminate export duties and does not refer to GATT XX exceptions. This may
Julia Qin 12 Aug 2014 5 min read

Price Tags of WTO Disputes: Big and Small

Chad Brown and Kara Reynolds have released an interesting study on the trade stakes (dollar value) under the WTO dispute settlement system. (“WTO trade disputes, big and small”).  While their data confirms, intuitively, that WTO members are likely to litigate on big ticket items, such as the Boeing-Airbus dispute, the
Sungjoon Cho 11 Aug 2014 1 min read

GATT Article XX an an Exception to the TBT Agreement

I was struck by this sentence from para. 5.56 of yesterday's China - Rare Earths Appellate Body report (made in the context of discussing the relationship between China's Accession Protocol and the Marrakesh Agreement/Multilateral Trade Agreements): Article XX of the GATT 1994 has been
Simon Lester 08 Aug 2014 1 min read

The Russian Food Import Ban under the DSU

From the Washington Post: Russia has aimed its latest cross-Atlantic swing at the American food industry. On Thursday, the country announced the suspension of billions of dollars in food imports from a number of countries — including Norway, Canada, Australia, the United States and the 28-nation European Union — in retaliation for
Simon Lester 08 Aug 2014 2 min read

ISDS in CETA: Some Ideas for a Compromise

The FT reports on how ISDS is holding up the CETA negotiations: The EU struck a political agreement on a trade accord with Ottawa last year but the deal has become mired in negotiations over investors’ rights. Berlin fears that German standards of environmental and consumer protection could be undermined
Simon Lester 05 Aug 2014 2 min read

How the EU Influences WTO Jurisprudence

Following up on my blog post of earlier today, this is from Tilman Krueger: the EU actively contributes to rule development in the WTO also as a litigant in the context of WTO dispute settlement and in addition to its immediate, case-specific interests. Two examples for such behaviour will now
Simon Lester 04 Aug 2014 1 min read

Are the U.S. and EU Dominating Appellate Body "Law-Making"?

Joost raises an important systemic issue in a new paper: This contribution makes an empirical assessment of the role of precedent in WTO dispute settlement. As an imperfect proxy it counts cross-references between the 108 Appellate Body reports issued between 1996 and 2013. Using basic tools of network analysis it
Simon Lester 04 Aug 2014 1 min read

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International Economic Law and Policy Blog

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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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