Reuters reports that the Ex-Im bank has been reauthorized. In this context, President Obama said: As long as our global competitors are providing financing for their exports, we've got to do the same. So I'm glad that Congress got this done. It sounds to me

Is there any way for the US not to discriminate against foreign tuna with its dolphin safe labeling laws? In the context of the WTO Tuna decision and possible implementation alternatives, some members of Congress seem to think this will be difficult: The WTO decision, in contrast, would require the

From Rob Howse, who asked me to post this for him: At the May 24 DSB meeting the United States made the following statement concerning implementation of the Cloves ruling: This morning, as provided for in the first sentence of Article 21.3 of the DSU, the United States wishes

There are a number of past GATT/WTO disputes where the issue of the "coercive" nature of the measure was raised. The old tuna/dolphin cases and the shrimp/turtle cases come to mind immediately, and I'm sure there are others. (I haven't done

This is from paragraph 299 of the Tuna report, where the Appellate Body sets out its conclusion on TBT 2.1: We  find, instead, that the US "dolphin-safe" labelling provisions provide "less favourable treatment" to Mexican tuna products than that accorded to tuna products of

New Zealand is talking about getting rid of smoking entirely: There are smoke-free bars, smoke-free parks, even smoke-free college campuses. But a smoke-free country? New Zealand's government on Thursday squeezed smokers more than ever by announcing a 40 percent hike in tobacco taxes over

I enjoyed reading the discussions so far related to the latest AB report on Tuna.  Streamlining Tuna with Cloves, in both cases we now have: (1) a finding of discrimination (cloves v. menthols in Cloves; stricter labeling requirements in the ETP v. outside the ETP in Tuna) and (2) a

It is now established in WTO case-law that, apart from certain limited situations, the existence of a  Benefit arising from a financial contribution is based on the comparison between for example the terms of a loan and the market based commercial benchmark for an equivalent loan. It is implicit

Benn McGrady has more details on the US trade in tobacco proposal: through questioning it was possible to get a better sense of what is being proposed. So, this is my (incomplete) understanding of the proposal: 1. There will be some language recognizing the uniquely harmful character of tobacco products.

Call for papers Standard of Review in International Courts and Tribunals Rethinking the Fragmentation and Constitutionalization of International Law 26-27 October 2012 Sponsored by: COST Action IS1003, International Law Between Constitutionalization and Fragmentation http://www.il-cf.eu and University of Seville, Faculty of Law The fragmentation of international