An appeal has been lodged in the Yusuf case (T-306/01), decided by the European Court of First Instance decided in September last year. The case is not about WTO Law, but is of interest to those following the EU/WTO direct effect saga before the European courts. Yusuf

That is the title of the FT's editorial on the softwood lumber settlement.  The FT concludes "In the end, the softwood sata shows the limits of international disputes procedures when the two parties are determined to ignore them and go on slugging it out."  Was the

Today's NYT reports a settlement of the U.S.-Canada lumber dispute.  To say that this dispute has generated a lot of litigation is an understatement.   And I suppose that the fact that the parties were willing to pay for all this litigation suggests that it had an

It seems that the vultures are beginning to circle Doha.  Given increasing economic arguments that the potential surpluses of a Doha deal (a lot depends on what that deal eventually is!) are not so large, and that only a small portion would be captured by the poor countries, I can&

There are two things going on at the IMF. First, the IMF is turning its focus to global trade imbalances.  This suggests a return to the original Bretton Woods vision of coordinated trade and monetary policy.  See the Paul Bluestein story in the Washington Post.  I wonder how the IMF&

On April 18, 2006, the Appellate Body (AB) released its decision on the U.S. "zeroing" dispute which the EU initiated. (UNITED STATES – LAWS, REGULATIONS AND METHODOLOGY FOR CALCULATING DUMPING MARGINS ("ZEROING"), WT/DS294/AB/R) http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/294abr_

SSRN includes a post of a new paper by Daniel Rodriquez and Barry Weingast.  The abstract and reference are below.  The idea is that interest group strategies to expand the scope of regulatory statutes through adjudicative action have backfired:  they have made it difficult for legislators to agree on new

Sunday's New York Times has a piece by Eduardo Porter commenting on the literature evaluating the effects of immigrants on the wages of low-wage workers in the U.S.  See the excerpts on the Washington Monthly blog. As usual, there are several ways to view the situation

This from the Wall St. Journal President Bush nominated Trade Representative Rob Portman as the White House budget director, turning to a Washington insider and longtime friend as part of an effort to re-energize the administration and boost the president's record-low approval ratings. Mr. Bush also