Lorand Bartels has a draft paper in which he argues that the EU's new GSP+ arrangement is not consistent with WTO rules.  He explains: Under this arrangement, additional tariff preferences (normally duty free treatment), were made available to developing countries committing to ratify and implement a list of

See the nice post by Peter Spiro at Opinio Juris.

Just two quick points related to Joel's earlier posts about the "new" U.S. approach to trade policy. First, according to the USTR fact sheets on labor and the environment, there is to be a requirement that any alleged labor/environment violations must "affect"

The USTR has now published a fact sheet providing a bit more detail on the new deal between the administraiton and congress (hat tip to Julian Ku at Opinio Juris).  The idea is to make the 5 core principles subject to the same dispute settlement as commercial obligations, but (i)

There is an interesting article in the IHT recently on the possibility of the WTO moving its headquarters in protest of the unattractive offer made by the Swiss government to expand its building. Both HK and Singapore, two Members with the most liberalized trade regimes, were rumored to be among

News reports today are filled with stories of the deal between democrats and republicans regarding trade and labor/environment.  One particularly detailed story is here.  According to the report, ranking republican member of the House Ways and Means Committee McCreary says the deal won't be applicable to WTO

Bloomberg reports that Barack Obama will be getting trade policy advice from Dan Tarullo of Georgetown: The tough task of helping to develop a trade policy that avoids overt protectionism may fall to [Daniel] Tarullo, a 54-year-old trade expert. Tarullo ``escapes easy labeling,'' said former Clinton chief of

Brazil has issued a compulsory license for the medicine Efavirenz, an important anti-retroviral.  See the story here.  Brazil had negotiated with Merck for a couple of years, and failed to reach agreement on price.  Apparently, Brazil would have been satisfied with the same price charged in Thailand, but Merck felt

So far, Dani Rodrik's blog has been extremely interesting.  In a post today, he says that the issue of "whether we should increase trade restrictions or lower them" is part of the "old debate," and then suggests that today's questions are different: