International Economic Law and Policy Blog (Page 381)

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Discrimination Arguments in the AbitibiBowater NAFTA Chapter 11 Claim

Taking a quick break from the big picture questions in the Great Trade Debate, I'm going to bring up a very narrow and technical trade issue: How to apply a non-discrimination standard in the NAFTA Chapter 11 context. As was widely reported last week, AbitibiBowater is going ahead

Jim Bacchus on Global Financial Regulation: The GATT vs. The WTO

Former Appellate Body Member Jim Bacchus would like to see a "financial GATT," but not a "financial WTO": U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling has summed up the case for international coordination. "If everyone does their own thing it will achieve absolutely nothing.

Trade and ... Censorship, Marijuana and Abortion

It's not a sophisticated legal analysis, but I found this blogger's points to be interesting in terms of how non-specialists see the scope of trade rules: When business people are in doubt, they can always claim unfair trade in order to tap government diplomats and the

Ron Kirk's Senate Finance Testimony on the 2010 Trade Agenda

Todd Tucker of Eyes on Trade live blogged it. See his post for some basic details, or watch the video here. I'll just mention a couple points (a rough transcription, not verbatim) that struck me as interesting. First, Senator Grassley expressed concerns about the possibility of incorporating labor

The Great Trade Debate: Dan Griswold - The “Fletcher Tariff” would cripple U.S. producers and invite retaliation

By Daniel Griswold In the spirit of civility, something lacking in Washington these days, let me start with a compliment for my worthy opponent. Ian Fletcher has resisted the temptation to demagogue trade and jobs. He is right that trade and the trade deficit do not cause a net loss

The Great Trade Debate: Ian Fletcher - Reply to Dan Griswold on Free Trade

By Ian Fletcher Dan’s cheery (if somewhat bubble-inflated) statistics on the recent general prosperity of the U.S. are a mere distraction here, as nothing about these figures indicates whether free trade worsened or improved them. So I will not address them. Some of Dan’s analytically-relevant assertions, however,

Google's Plan for Promoting Internet Openness

In testimony before the the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, at at a hearing on "Global Internet Freedom and the Rule of Law, Part II," Nicole Wong, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of Google, provides some suggestions for "how

The Obama Administration's Investor Protection Policy

From Chapter 1 of the Obama Administration's 2010 Trade Policy Agenda: Work to Resolve Outstanding Issues with Pending Free Trade Agreements and Build on Existing Trade and Investment Arrangements ... Substantial investment in foreign markets has become an indispensable foundation for supporting many American exports. Bilateral Investment Treaties are

EU denies preferences to products from Israeli settlements

The European Court of Justice decided an interesting case last week (Case C-386/08, Brita, 25 February 2010). The Hauptzollamt Hamburg-Hafen (the main customs office of the port of Hamburg) had refused to give preferential treatment under the EC-Israel Association Agreement to products manufactured by an Israeli company in the

The Great Trade Debate: Ian Fletcher - Free Trade Fails in Both Theory and Practice

Free Trade Fails in Both Theory and Practice By Ian Fletcher Free trade is gradually bleeding America’s economy to death, and the much-promoted myth that economics vindicates it does not survive serious scrutiny. To debate this issue without bogging down in semantics, we need to make a few things