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Mobil v. Canada: The Scope of Fair and Equitable Treatment

Via a Luke Peterson tweet, I see that the Mobil v. Canada ICSID hearing will be going on this week, starting tomorrow (Tuesday), and is open to the public.  No webcasting as far as I can tell, unfortunately.  You have to make your way down there. One issue that is
Simon Lester 18 Oct 2010 1 min read

Krugman on Quantitative Easing and Currencies

He seems to take the same "aim and effect" (as Julia referred to it) approach to the issue that I do: In various comments and other places I keep seeing people compare European complaints about the weak dollar to American complaints about the undervalued renminbi. It’s a
Simon Lester 18 Oct 2010 1 min read

The U.S. Investigation of China's Clean Energy Subsidies

Reuters reports: China on Saturday hit back at U.S. government action to investigate a labour union's charges that it subsidises its green technology producers, saying the move sends a wrong signal on trade protectionism. The U.S. probe will look into whether Chinese support for its clean
Simon Lester 17 Oct 2010 1 min read

Fiscal Policy, Monetary Policy and Currency Values

I've thought a bit more about the previous post where I suggested that not all measures affecting currencies should lead to fears of a "currency war".  I'm not much of an expert in this area, and I'm happy to have someone explain
Simon Lester 17 Oct 2010 3 min read

Alternative Approaches to Causation

In the Journal of World Trade (and free on SSRN), Dukgeun Ahn and William J. Moon argue for a new approach to the causation standard in trade remedy investigations, which they call the "Cost of Production" test.  Here's an excerpt: We argue that correlation, in a
Simon Lester 15 Oct 2010 1 min read

Copenhagen Competition on Access to Medicines -- Live Broadcast this evening

Kudos to the University of Copenhagen (and especially Prof. Laura Nielsen) for organizing the Copenhagen international negotiation competition. Last year the competition simulated a climate change treaty in parallel with the COP15 talks. This year, the teams from OECD and non-OECD law schools have been negotiating segments of a protocol
Tomer Broude 15 Oct 2010 1 min read

Dan Griswold on Trade Negotiations versus Trade Enforcement

Which is more important: Trade negotiations or trade enforcement?  Writing in the Washington Times, Dan Griswold argues: The Obama administration has vowed to ramp up enforcement of existing trade agreements in an effort to open markets further to U.S. exports. The pledge is popular with members of Congress who
Simon Lester 14 Oct 2010 3 min read

Unilateral Free Trade in Cabbage

Every now and then, a unique set of circumstances arises that leads a government to embrace free trade unilaterally, if only for a particular product.  The Economist reports on the impact of a dramatic rise in cabbage prices: Normally, Koreans serve home-grown kimchi as a matter of honour. But people
Simon Lester 14 Oct 2010 1 min read

The Export Contingency Standard

I've got a hypothetical related to the export contingency standard, and I'm curious to hear what people think of it.  Let's say you have a subsidy measure under which the subsidy is available to producers on the following basis.  You get the subsidy if
Simon Lester 12 Oct 2010 1 min read

Mitchell and Voon on WTO Law and Tobacco Regulation

Two papers to mention here.  First up, Andrew Mitchell and Tania Voon have posted "Regulating Tobacco Flavours: Implications of WTO Law" on SSRN.  Here's the abstract: Within the World Trade Organization (‘WTO’), regulatory measures of Canada and the United States restricting ‘flavouring’ of tobacco products including
Simon Lester 12 Oct 2010 2 min read

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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

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

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