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

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

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:

From Peggy McGuinness: International Law Weekend 2007 Towards a New Vision of International Law Call for Panel Proposals The post-9/11 era has been one of great contestation for international law.  Scholars and practitioners debate basic questions about the content and nature of public international law and how the

Well, I spent the afternoon at a conference at Harvard today, where Jagdish Bhagwati was to debate Alan Blinder about Offshoring/Outsourcing. Actually, their biggest disagreement was about the name of the phenomenon. Blinder uses offshoring to refer to country effects, as opposed to firm effects, whereas Bhagwati just uses