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What is Free Trade About?

From Neena Shenai of AEI: Fundamentally, the Obama administration doesn't really get free trade and entirely misses its importance to U.S. national security. Free trade isn't just about economic gains--it is also about reinforcing strategic political and security ties with key allies. As is occasionally
Simon Lester 12 Jun 2009 1 min read

Buy America Issues: Commitments versus Access

There have been quite a few news articles in the past several days about Canadian concerns that Canadian companies are shut out of many U.S. state and local government procurement conracts, but U.S. companies have access to similar Canadian contracts.  Some have suggested keeping U.S. companies out
Simon Lester 10 Jun 2009 1 min read

China in WTO Dispute Settlement

Chad Bown on U.S.-China WTO disputes: While many trade policy observers focus on signs of life from the Doha round of negotiations, arguably more important to the long-run relevance of the WTO is how the United States and China politically manage a number of currently ongoing formal trade
Simon Lester 10 Jun 2009 1 min read

The European Commission's Report on U.S. Gambling Measures

Under its Trade Barriers Regulation, the European Commission published a report today concluding that U.S. measures affecting foreign suppliers of Internet gambling services "constitute an obstacle to trade that is inconsistent with WTO rules."  The full report is here.  The legal analysis is on pages 53-77 and
Simon Lester 10 Jun 2009 3 min read

Bringing Down Health Care Costs

In terms of U.S. domestic politics, health care seems to be trumping trade policy these days.  I'd rather talk about trade policy than health care, so I'm going to try to sneak trade policy into the health care discussion by proposing the following:  If we
Simon Lester 09 Jun 2009 1 min read

Monitoring Protectionism

Do you have a new instance of protectionism to report?   Here's a place to do it: Global Trade Alert provides real-time information on state measures taken during the current global downturn that are likely to affect foreign commerce. It goes beyond other monitoring initiatives by identifying the trading
Simon Lester 09 Jun 2009 1 min read

It's Becoming Difficult to "Buy American"

Dan Ikenson of Cato explains: Shake your head and chuckle as you learn that even the “DNA” of the U.S. steel industry, which pushed for adoption of the most restrictive Buy American provisions and which has been the manufacturing sector’s most vocal proponent of trade barriers over the
Simon Lester 09 Jun 2009 1 min read

Obama Administration Begs Off Freedom of Association Commitments

On May 11, 2009, the U.S. Department of State sent a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to inform them of the Administration’s priorities for action on treaties currently before the Committee. Sad to say that the ILO Convention on Freedom of Association and the Right to
Charnovitz 06 Jun 2009 1 min read

Two Views of How To Respond to Buy America

Prime Minister Harper: Canada is interested in a free trade deal with the United States that would open up local government procurements to both countries. The interest comes as Canadian companies continue to report difficulties in winning government contracts in U.S states and cities because of "Buy American&
Simon Lester 06 Jun 2009 1 min read

Two Articles on the Appellate Body

From the latest JIEL, here are two articles on the Appellate Body by Alberto Alvarez-Jimenez: The WTO Appellate Body's Decision-Making Process: A Perfect Model For International Adjudication? The functioning of the Appellate Body (AB) is virtually perfect in terms of collegial decision-making. During its first 12 years, it
Simon Lester 06 Jun 2009 2 min read

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International Economic Law and Policy Blog

International Economic Law and Policy Blog

Expert commentary on the law, politics and economics of international trade and investment

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Is There No Going Back on Trade? What Is the Path Forward? A Response to Lighthizer

Former U.S. Trade Rep. Bob Lighthizer has a new essay in Foreign Affairs, and I have some thoughts. I'm going to start with his brief big picture points on the direction of U.S. trade policy, and then go through a couple of the specific concepts he emphasizes.
27 Apr 2026 6 min read

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

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