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AB Member Tom Graham at Hofstra

Appellate Body Member Tom Graham will be giving a talk at Hofstra on Feb. 6 entitled “It Sure Looks Different From the Inside: Deciding International Trade Disputes at the WTO”. The title sounds promising, and from what I understand he will talk a bit about the use of the Vienna
Simon Lester 24 Jan 2013 1 min read

A Great Paper Title

The title is:  "I just read 296 trade agreements".  (Thanks to Hosuk Lee-Makiyama for the tip!) The substance is interesting, too: ... the first question that arises is: "Why do countries sign EIAs?" … The second question is: "What are they signing?" Empirical studies extensively show
Simon Lester 23 Jan 2013 2 min read

Rethinking Intellectual Property Rights, to Get Trade Negotiations Moving

Susan Aaronson has a short piece proposing some rethinking of intellectual property rights. She starts out with this: Rules governing intellectual property rights set the terms of access for users of knowledge, but the current system (which includes rigorous application of patent and copyright laws) can limit the supply of
Simon Lester 22 Jan 2013 2 min read

A Multilateral Investment Agreement

Anders Aslund of the Peterson Institute proposes a Mutilateral Investment Agreement (MIA) (not to be confused with the failed 1990s Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI)).  I found his proposal intriguing because, as I read it, he may be making subtle suggestions about how to approach international investment issues in a
Simon Lester 16 Jan 2013 2 min read

The WTO DG Race and the Future of the WTO

The prospect of a new WTO Director-General seems to have a lot of people thinking about the future of the WTO.  In the past few days, I've seen articles in the Guardian and Reuters, and also an FT op-ed by economist Arvind Subramanian. Subramanian thinks the problem with
Simon Lester 14 Jan 2013 4 min read

IEL Symposium 1 March 2013 in Melbourne

The Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH) is holding an Annual Symposium of the International Economic Law Interest Group (IELIG) of the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law (ANZSIL) on Friday, 1 March 2013 at Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne. This symposium is part
Tania Voon 14 Jan 2013 1 min read

IS IT POSSIBLE FOR A PANEL TO REJECT AN ARGUMENT BY SAYING SOLELY THAT "IT IS NOT CONVINCED"?

In the recent  panel reports relating to “ CANADA – CERTAIN MEASURES AFFECTING THE  RENEWABLE ENERGY GENERATION SECTOR” and “CANADA – MEASURES RELATING TO THE FEED-IN TARIFF PROGRAM” ,  the complainants ( namely,  the EU and Japan)  have asked the Panel not to limit its analysis to rejecting the benchmarks proposed by the parties,  and
Marc Benitah 14 Jan 2013 1 min read

The Increase in WTO Disputes

Back in July, I blogged about how many WTO disputes there had been so far in 2012.  At this pace, I said, we will see 24 complaints in 2012.  As it turns out, I was pretty close, but actually underestimated the total.  The final tally is now in: 27 complaints
Simon Lester 11 Jan 2013 4 min read

Do BITs Reflect Laissez-Faire Liberalism?

From a recent Columbia FDI Perspectives paper by Catharine Titi: ... it is time to start thinking about a new balance in a move away from investment treaties’ traditional laissez-faire liberalism toward WTO law’s embedded liberalism,[2] a model whereby liberalization is embedded within a wider framework that enables public
Simon Lester 09 Jan 2013 1 min read

Reforming Trade Remedies

Law prof Wentong Zheng wants to replace anti-dumping and countervailing duties with a country-specific safeguard.  Here's the abstract of his paper: This article aims to restart the debate on trade remedies by offering new perspectives on the fundamental defects of the current trade remedy regime and by proposing
Simon Lester 07 Jan 2013 2 min read

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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

USMCA Review and Extension Predictions

When the idea of an expiration clause was suggested during the NAFTA renegotiation, I was against it from the start, and Inu and I wrote a pretty critical piece about it at the time. A review is great, we said, let's definitely have reviews, and there are plenty of ways to do that.
08 Apr 2026 5 min read

The Section 301 Surge Continues: Investigating the Adoption/Enforcement/Administration of Forced Labor Import Bans

This Section 301 investigation intends to pressure all sixty named trade partners (even, inexplicably, including Canada and Mexico) to adopt similar enforcement procedures. This announcement is highly problematic for the four reasons I address below.
16 Mar 2026 4 min read

The Section 301 Surge Is Upon Us: Investigating Excess Capacity and Production

The first of a large batch of expected Section 301 investigations has arrived, as USTR announced yesterday that it was initiating investigations on acts, policies, and practices of various countries/economies "relating to structural excess capacity and production in manufacturing sectors."
12 Mar 2026 3 min read

Debunking the "Hyperglobalization" Trade Policy Myth

Policy is often shaped by narratives, and recently there has been a bipartisan effort to create a narrative that, starting in the early 1990s, globalization and free trade went too far.
03 Mar 2026 8 min read

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