WTO Director General Pascal Lamy is doing an on-line chat with the global public on February 21.  It's easy to be cyncial about such gestures--the "digital divide," the limits of the medium for serious deliberation, the self-selectivity of participants, etc., but let's hand it

Joel, our leader, has indicated that it is okay to use the blog for self-promotion (well, those weren't exactly his words) but anyhow  I thought I would mention that a new edition of my treatise with Michael Trebilcock, The Regulation of International Trade, was published in the fall,

Our own Petros Mavroidis, with Henrik Horn, has created data (well, not really created, so much as gathered).  It is available from the World Bank, which sponsored the research, at www.worldbank.org/trade/wtodisputes.  The manual describes the data as follows "[A] data set covering various aspects of

I am very glad to welcome Bill Davey to the group of contributors.  I'll have to slow down additions, or switch to chronological order--otherwise my name may slip down below visibility on the first screen.

This from today's Wall St. Journal "Washington Wire" Russia has been trying to get into the [WTO] for more than a  decade, but the U.S. won't give its approval unless Moscow allows foreign banks, insurers and other financial institutions to open branches. Right

It is with great pleasure that I welcome Paul Stephan of University of Virginia to the blog.

It is of course unwise to say very much about the Biotech ruling without having the reasons.  In fact, it is probably even misleading to say that the EC "lost" or the US "won."   The reasons of the panel may overall be of more assistance to

WIth the addition of Joost Pauwelyn, Debra Steger and Chantal Thomas, the blog now has three new formidable contributors.  I look forward with great anticipation to their posts.

The following quick and dirty summary is based on the panel's conclusions and recommendations in the interim report from the Trade Observatory website (focusing on the U.S. complaint).  It summarizes the summary, and is perforce wholly ignorant of the panel's legal reasoning and detailed assessment

As noted in an earlier post, the interim panel report in the GMOs case was issued to the parties yesterday.  Despite the confidentiality requirement that applies to interim reports, there has been some discussion of the case in the press.  It is unclear at this point how accurate this discussion