Bloomberg reports: Canada filed a complaint against Belgium at the World Trade Organization, in an effort to reverse the European Union country's ban on seal products. ... ``This government believes that the Belgian ban on the importation and marketing of seal products is a violation of Belgium's

The House has just killed a reform version of the new Farm Bill and instead passed a highly protectionist bill, as had widely been expected. President Bush vowed to veto this version. Now, the ball has been passed to the Senate. (See NY Times, Still Waiting for Farm Reform, July

The recent panel report about Japan - DRAMS offers an interesting and somewhat irritating example of how a word could loose completely its ordinary meaning through a WTO panel’s interpretation. No wonder that we will hear once again the accusation of "judicial activism". Article 12.9 of the

I'm not sure yet what to make of this surefire box office hit. Should I let my students watch it? Are they mature enough? I actually like Woody Harrelson (not to mention Charlize Theron). With all due respect to both, I like the other Woody much, much more.

Ha-Joon Chang of the University of Cambridge writes the following in the Independent (based on a book he has coming out): Both the history of rich countries and the recent records of developing countries point to the same conclusion. Economic development requires tariffs, regulation of foreign investment, permissive intellectual

In addition to the obviously controversial subsidies in the U.S. farm bill currently under debate in Congress, there's another potentially contentious trade issue in the bill:  country of origin labeling (COOL) requirements for certain meat products.  The Palm Beach Post reports: Last week, the U.S. House

Blog readers might be interested in the papers from the recent Max Planck symposium on public international law and economics.  See here (the International Law Reports blog) for summaries of the papers, and links to their SSRN locations.

I just finished teaching a group of bright Canadian law students a basic course on multilateral and regional trade law. At one point I couldn't resist asking them if they had ever eaten a genetically modified food product. Of course they had no idea. So much for consumer