From USTR: Today U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk sent a joint letter to their counterparts in China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) urging China to revoke a proposed rule (Circular 226) that

From Congressman Mike Michaud, one of the sponsors of the “Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment (TRADE) Act,” introduced in the House: What Must and Must Not Be in All Agreements: The bill contains a detailed description of the key provisions that must be included in all future U.S.

Some links related to today's announcement of the EC/U.S. complaint against Chinese export restrictions: U.S. Slams China on Exports - BusinessWeek The U.S. and the European Union on June 23 formally accused China of illegally hampering exports of raw materials in order to benefit

http://www.ogel.org/news.asp?key=189 Oil, Gas and Energy Law Intelligence (www.ogel.org) invites submissions for a Special issue covering antitrust issues in energy. The guest editor for this special issue is Prof. Nicolas Petit (Lecturer in Competition Law and Economics at the University of Liege

At Eyes on Trade, Todd Tucker responds to my post on the clove cigarette ban.  The focus of his post is a quote from an insider involved in the debate over the bill, who had this to say: Menthol historically in the US has been marketed to African Americans, so

As is fairly well-known, WTO and other trade rules permit a good deal of protectionism.  For example, when certain conditions are met, "safeguard" measures may be imposed to keep out imports.  With these kinds of measures, governments have some discretion as to how much protection for domestic industry

I was thinking about what I said briefly the other day regarding the benefits of foreign competition in the health care (specifically, health insurance) industry.  I thought maybe someone else had discussed this idea in more detail, so I did some quick web searches.  The best I found was this:

From ICTSD: The International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), an independent non-profit and non-governmental organization contributing to a better understanding of development and environment concerns in the context of international trade, seeks to recruit a pro-active professional to fill position of Trade Negotiations Insights (TNI) Editor.More at

Adrian Vermeule of Harvard Law School proposes reining in the role of courts: Professor Adrian Vermeule’s newest book is likely to raise a few judicial eyebrows. “Law and the Limits of Reason,” just published by Oxford University Press, is a broad-based criticism of the dominant role played by courts

As many of you probably have heard already, the WTO has established a WTO Chairs Program to support WTO-related research and teaching activities in developing countries. While the deadline for the first round of call for proposals has expired on May 29th, similar opportunities might be offered in the future.