Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Fed, has made his views on globalization known in a well publicized speech. Globalization is nothing new, it is the way of the world, free trade is wonderful, a cross between liberty and gravity. This is all well rehearsed and unsurprising. Only towards the end,

Dr. Fred Bergsten, Director of the Institute for International Economics, wrote in Financial Times that a grand Asia-Pacific regional bloc, i.e., "Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific Region (FTAAP)," should be launched as a "Plan B" in the face of the moribund Doha

The conventional wisdom in the GATT days was that complainants requested consultations under Article XXII when they wanted to attract third parties and negotiate, but under Article XXIII:1 when they did not want third parties intervening and didn't especially want to negotiate.  These days, it appears that

A new journal, The Africa International Trade Review, has put out a call for papers on its site: http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm2/africa_international_trade_review.html The journal describes itself as: "This multi-disciplinary journal, a first in Africa, forms part of the

This from the editors of the Yale Journal of International Law:I am writing on behalf of the Yale Journal of International Law to let you know that we have just issued our call for papers for our annual conference, which will take place this coming March. This year’s

From Sergey Ripinsky of the British Institute of International and Comparative LawI came across the rule in the US legislation (adopted in 1971), which requires to buy 80% of all narcotic raw materials from two countries - India and Turkey - and the remaining 20% from five other countries (the so-called

Guest blogger Bryan Mercurio writes the following: Governments often commission and rely on economic analysis to publicly justify FTA negotiations, but it seems to me that such analyses are becoming increasingly meaningless and even deceptive, at most serving only as a 'best case' scenario and often being used

When I saw today's FT story about a number of Indian states banning Coke and Pepsi because a scientific study had shown that they contained as much as 24 times the amount of permitted pesticide residues, and saw that the soft drink makers had argued that they comply

Marc Busch, Karl Landegger Chair in International Business Diplomacy at Georgetown, has joined our group.  Marc has written widely about international political economy, including extremely interesting empirical work on WTO dispute settlement.

Guest blogger Michael Ewing-Chow of National University of Singapore writes as follows:On 1 Aug 2006, President Bush has extended the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act 2003 for another 3 years. (See http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/08/20060801.html )The Press Release from the White House