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Trade in Services

21 posts

The U.S. “Worker-Centered Trade Policy” is helping some workers in Mexico but not in America

This Labor Day post seeks to shed light on the Biden administration’s “worker-centered” trade policy. It argues that the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA) misses a critical opportunity to strengthen workers’ rights in America. The agreement’s provisions exclude protections for the most vulnerable workers in U.S. trade

The Doha Problem

The WTO has just published the request by Qatar for consultations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia concerning their trade restrictions. I quickly skimmed through the requests and found a few interesting points: 1. This is the second time a WTO Member has made consultation requests simultaneously

Outsourcing Legal Work

From The Economist: RITU SOLANKI, a 28-year-old lawyer with a degree from Nottingham University, spends most of her time drafting contracts and legal memos for a telecoms firm in Britain. She, however, is in Gurgaon, a high-rise satellite city on Delhi’s edge, where she works for CPA Global, a

Origin Labeling for Help Lines?

And a tax, too. Reuters reports: In a bid to reduce outsourcing of U.S. jobs, a Democratic senator said on Sunday he will push legislation to make companies inform customers when their calls were being transferred outside the United States and charge companies for those transferred calls. "This

Global Trade Watch on the Prudential Carve Out

In this recent memo, Global Trade Watch expresses concern about the GATS "prudential carve out" in the area of financial services regulation. The carve out is in Article 2(a) of the GATS Annex on Financial Services and reads as follows: 2. Domestic Regulation (a) Notwithstanding any other

A Possible WTO Complaint on Credit Card Services

I had seen brief references to a WTO complaint against China related to the credit card industry, but didn't know the details. Here's the argument, as set out by Eric Grover in the Washington Times: Chinese banks have 1.88 billion debit cards and 190 million

Government Support for Domestic Companies Building Nuclear Reactors Abroad

The Economist has a piece on competition in the market for building nuclear reactors, in which they discuss how state support for domestic competitors may be playing a role: ... the United Arab Emirates (UAE) completed a tender for four nuclear plants in December, Vietnam is planning a similar deal this

More on Trade in Health Services

With the passage of a health care bill this past week-end by the U.S. House of Representatives, I thought it was time for another post on trade in health services. This time I'll rely on an expert, Lior Herman of ECIPE. From the abstract of Assessing International

Lamy on Services Liberalization

From a recent speech by WTO DG Pascal Lamy: Trade, or more specifically financial services liberalization, was neither a villain nor a cause of this crisis but a casualty. As you all know, in the world of the GATS, “liberalization” is essentially about opening specified sectors to competition on a

Technological Change and the Timing of GATS Schedules

One interesting part of the recent China - Publications panel report was the discussion of technological change and the timing of GATS commitments. The specific interpretive question where this arose was the following: whether China's GATS commitment on "sound recording distribution services" in Sector 2.D,