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The Second Seals Hearing-A Big Picture View

It is easy to be depressed and disgruntled after this hearing.  A panel Chair who is ignorant even of the most basic case law fundamental to the panel's own duties and jurisdiction, a Chair who manages to make a sexual and racial caricature in one breath, then a
Rob Howse 30 Apr 2013 7 min read

Iura non novit curia (or: "no, we know no Bananas today")

As I tweeted earlier, a dramatic moment occured in the Seal Products hearing this morning, when the chair of the panel took the view that once a panel  has been approved by the DSB whether the original request is defective is merely a matter of academic interest and of no
Rob Howse 30 Apr 2013 1 min read

Day One, Second Round of Seals Hearings-II

Toward the end of the afternoon, the focus became the comparison of the non-indigenous non-marine management seal hunt in Canada with the indigenous seal hunt in Greenland.  Norway insisted that both hunts are really "commercial" since they are both on a significant scale, both involve the provision of
Rob Howse 30 Apr 2013 3 min read

Day One, Second Round of Seals Hearings-The State of Play (Detailed Legal Analysis to Follow Later into the Geneva Night)

If paranoid people can have enemies, then a cliche can be true.  So, today, a picture is worth a thousand words.  The hearing quickly broke out of the anachronistic ritual of exchanges of written texts read word for word as the EU screened graphic videos of seals writhing in agony
Rob Howse 29 Apr 2013 9 min read

Norway's Use and Abuse of the ECJ Judgment in Oral Argument (A Prelude)

My main posts on today's session of the Seals hearing are a few hours away, but there is one particular strategem of Norway that I thought I'd comment on right away—it concerns a question that Ruti Teitel and I have written on recently, the use
Rob Howse 29 Apr 2013 4 min read

A Good Paper by Economists on Climate and Trade But Flawed Legal Analysis of Border Carbon Adjustment

The Peterson Institute has published an interesting paper by two very good economists, Aaditya Mattoo and Arvind Subramanian, about trade and climate mitigation.bit.ly/ZQLATw  While as a matter of economics I rather like the Joe Stiglitz conceptualization of the problem better than theirs, then again I am not
Rob Howse 29 Apr 2013 2 min read

WTO DG Candidate Blanco (Re-?)located on the Web

I think there is an end to my saga of not finding Blanco's website.  Late yesterday I found a different site than the one originally listed on his twitter page.  This is it.  http://bit.ly/168q9Bm.  But then I also discovered that the link on the Twitter
Rob Howse 28 Apr 2013 1 min read

Blanking on Blanco: What is it with his website?

As I recently tweeted, over the last 24 hours I've tried to access WTO Director General candidate Herminio Blanco's website on 4 different devices (the last one an open computer in the Swiss lounge in JFK airport, so it's nothing to do with my
Rob Howse 27 Apr 2013 1 min read

Aftermath of the ECJ Seal Ban Judgment: Pro-hunt lobby angry and demoralized

It's pretty clear that the pro-seal hunt interests are hurting hard from their loss at the ECJ.  One spokesperson appeared to accuse the Court of being "self-serving" and lacking a "fair or just process."  That doesn't seem very consistent, to say the
Rob Howse 26 Apr 2013 1 min read

Discrimination in the Seal Products Dispute: The Role of Categories

This is from the second EU written submission in seal products: 199. Canada considers that the EU Seal Regime, through the IC exception, modifies the conditions of competition to the detriment of its imports when compared with imports of Greenland. Specifically, Canada suggests that, in the case of an origin-neutral
Simon Lester 25 Apr 2013 4 min read

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Jamieson Greer on the 30 Year Aberration in U.S. Trade Policy

When he was in Davos last week for the World Economic Forum, U.S. Trade Rep. Jamieson Greer talked a bit about U.S. trade policy history and described a recent period during which, in his view, U.S. trade policy shifted away from tariffs/protectionism and towards free trade.
29 Jan 2026 6 min read

Is this the end of MFN as we know it? The EU submission on WTO reform and the meaning of development

With the release of the EU submission on WTO reform, it has become clear that the MFN principle’s central role within the WTO architecture is under challenge. As a keystone, it risks the entire bridge falling. Even if the foundations are retained but deemed outdated or unusable, and a
23 Jan 2026 3 min read

Can "Geopolitical" Tariffs Be Dealt With through Trade Deals?

Last Friday, U.S. Trade Rep. Jamieson Greer was asked about Trump's initial suggestion of tariffs related to the goal of taking over Greenland
20 Jan 2026 4 min read

Is Foreign Antitrust Enforcement "Discriminatory" and "Anti-American"?

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust held a hearing in December on "Anti-American Antitrust: How Foreign Governments Target U.S. Businesses." There was a lot of talk at the hearing about how foreign regulations and regulators "discriminate" against American companies.
05 Jan 2026 5 min read

Pennsylvania Court Finds Mexican Government Guilty of "Discrimination" Due To Its Subsidies

I'm always interested in how courts apply the concept of "discrimination" in the context of international trade, so I've been eagerly awaiting a Pennsylvania court decision in a case against Mexico.
12 Dec 2025 8 min read

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