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Opt Outs, NVNI, or Automatic Rebalancing for National Security Disputes

Veteran U.S. trade lawyers Warren Maruyama and Alan Wolff have a new paper out on "Saving the WTO from the national security exception". In their conclusion, they set out three solutions to the "impasse over justiciability of national security claims": (1) allowing Members to "
Simon Lester 23 May 2023 6 min read

Protectionism, Competition, and Corporate Power

Here's something U.S. Trade Rep. Katherine Tai said in a recent interview with PBS: In trade policy, it's something very interesting, and I've seen this happen in competition policy, where the anti-monopoly folks, antitrust people are working. We see in both of these
Simon Lester 21 May 2023 3 min read

Battle of the Gruyeres

Back in January 2022, I wrote about a U.S. federal court ruling that Gruyere is a generic cheese term, which meant that, despite the protests of the Swiss cheese industry, U.S. producers could make Gruyere cheese and put the word "Gruyere" on the product label in
Simon Lester 17 May 2023 3 min read

The Transatlantic Alignment on a Transnational Subsidy

The U.S. Department of Commerce has proposed a new agential interpretation on the countervailability of the so-called “transnational subsidy.”  What is a transnational subsidy?  Wentong Zheng and I have recently discussed this issue in an article.  Here are some relevant excerpts: Suppose that a foreign company (A) from country
Sungjoon Cho 16 May 2023 2 min read

Warren, Doggett, et al. Letter on Removing ISDS from Existing Agreements

Thirty-three Democratic members of Congress, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congressman Lloyd Doggett, recently sent a letter to U.S. Trade Rep. Katherine Tai and Secretary of State Antony Blinken about ISDS. One point they made in the letter is that ISDS should be removed from existing investment treaties
Simon Lester 14 May 2023 3 min read

Pigs and World Trade

Pigs and World Trade 11 May 2023 The decision by the US Supreme Court today in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross has profound implications for international trade.  By validating the constitutionality of PPM-based domestic trade restrictions on what belongs in California stores, the Court has prioritized local government regulations
Charnovitz 11 May 2023 1 min read

Negotiating After a Loss – ADR and the US Steel Tariff Cases

How can the WTO facilitate negotiation between disputing WTO Members? DSU Article 5 offers all disputing WTO Members flexible dispute processes via good offices, conciliation, or mediation. Such proceedings may begin at any time (see fn 59), end at any time, precede formal dispute proceedings, and continue while a panel
Mona Paulsen 10 May 2023 3 min read

Does Ro Khanna Want To Get Rid of the Specificity Requirement in WTO Subsidies Rules?

In a recent post, I quoted a speech by Congressman Ro Khanna, in which he said: The US needs to work with our allies to pursue a broad WTO dispute case against the PRC. One hurdle is that the current Dispute Settlement process cannot litigate in key China-related areas that
Simon Lester 07 May 2023 2 min read

Jake Sullivan on International Economics and Industrial Policy

White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan gave a speech last week on the Biden Administration's international economic agenda, with follow-up questions from a Brookings senior fellow and the audience. The video and transcript of the whole event are here (a transcript of the opening remarks is also
Simon Lester 03 May 2023 10 min read

WTI Seeks Professor of International Economic Law with a Specialization in Trade Law

This is from the World Trade Institute: The World Trade Institute, a strategic centre of the University of Bern, and a leading centre of applied research on and teaching of international economic law, economics and politics, invites applications for the position of an Associate / Full Professor for International Economic Law
Simon Lester 02 May 2023 2 min read

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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

Guest Post: Are President Trump’s New Section 122 Tariffs Legal?

This is a guest post from Bryan Riley and Joe Bishop-Henchman. Bryan is Director of the Free Trade Initiative at the National Taxpayers Union; Joe is Executive Vice President at the National Taxpayers Union Foundation President Trump has issued new 10% tariffs, shortly after raised to 15%, based on Section
24 Feb 2026 6 min read

Section 122 as a (Partial) Replacement for the IEEPA Tariffs

Apparently, this is the era of dusting off old international economic policy statutes and figuring out what they mean and how they work. After the Supreme Court's ruling today in Learning Resources, holding that "IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs," we are now
20 Feb 2026 5 min read

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