Taking Stock of the Vienna Talks on a Restored Iran Nuclear Deal

As negotiators interrupted  the 8th round of  talks on restoring the JCPOA for the New Year's holiday, the mood in Vienna ranged from confidence that the bargaining would continue until an agreement is reached, to more cautious statements of hopefulness from the United States. Since until now the

Of Carrots and Sticks:Why Economics Sanctions Relief is the Only Way Forward With Iran-the Threat of Force is Delusional

Recently on this blog, Ruti Teitel and I suggested some ideas for persuading Iran's leaders that economic sanctions relief in return for restored nuclear curbs can be of durable economic benefit for the country-even on the nightmare scenario of a future Administration breaking America's word

Applying the Mandatory / Discretionary Distinction to the EU's Anti-Coercion Instrument

I've been thinking about the mandatory/discretionary distinction because it came up in the panel report in the recent U.S. - Olives from Spain case (which was adopted by the DSB today, i.e., not appealed into the void by the U.S., which is kind of a

A Seventh Agreement To Use the MPIA

As readers can probably tell, I'm using this blog to track all the WTO disputes for which there have been agreed procedures between the parties for using the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA). See this link for the whole list (along with other developments in this

What Are the Core Trade Principles of the Biden Administration?

I'm trying to understand the core trade principles of the Biden administration, and I'm a bit puzzled. Based on various statements by U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and others in recent months, I would have thought the dominant view was that trade liberalization had gone

Binding Precedent and Precedential Value

The WTO panel report in India - Sugar and Sugarcane, circulated earlier this week, has a number of interesting passages about the role of precedent. They are a bit disconnected, and for some of them all I have is the panel's summary rather than the full statement from the

From Grievances to Guarantees: Getting to Yes in the Iran Nuclear Talks

(This post is co-authored with Ruti Teitel, Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law at New York Law School and a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations) After a long hiatus that followed a change in Iran’s political leadership (and something of a  rocky start in

Non-Discrimination and the EV Tax Credits in the Build Back Better Act

There has been a lot of Twitter discussion about the possibility that the electric vehicle (EV) tax credits in the Build Back Better Act violate USMCA or WTO obligations. There are actually three components to these tax credits, and I thought it was worth doing a quick analysis of each

Countering the "Unfettered Liberalization" Narrative

At a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event today, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said the following: But I think that we have pursued a really unfettered liberalization policy for the past many years and decades. And it is part of what has brought us to this current reality

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The draft agriculture text has nothing in it - What a laugh! I wonder if some of you have had a chance to look at the text produced by the Negotiating group on Agriculture for MC12 https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news21_e/agri_30nov21_e.htm The text