In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Trade & Economic Law

22 Mar

Today's Financial Times has a story on how unhappy U.S. businesses have become about Chinese government restrictions interfering with their access to Chinese markets.  So, one can understand how U.S. exporters would welcome news that the United States and China are getting closer to including a Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT).  And, let's be clear, this would be the mother-of-all BITs, given...

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18 Mar

Japan triumphs in a big way at the CITES meeting in Doha, as the U.S. proposed ban on bluefin tuna trade goes down 20-68. The rejection of the bluefin proposal was a clear victory for the Japanese government, which had vowed to go all out to stop the measure or else exempt itself from complying with it. Japan, which consumes nearly...

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18 Mar

I am not a huge fan of restrictive and protectionist trade policy, but I can't offer any serious legal quarrel with the recently proposed Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment Act by the growing anti-trade bloc in the U.S. Congress.  As Lori Wallach from Public Citizen notes, the Act offers a radically new approach to U.S. trade policy.  The Act explicitly...

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16 Mar

Sure there is some dispute about settlements in East Jerusalem, or something, but here are some international law disputes that really matter. At CoP15, or the 15th Meeting of the Parties to the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species - currently going on in Doha, parties are discussing: resuming (or not resuming) the trade in ivory and imposing a...

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15 Mar

The general consensus among comments to my post last week on the previously-unacknowledged U.S.-Japanese security agreements was "no big deal."  These pacts reinforce an already well-developed practice of states doing deals--whether legally binding or political commitments--without U.N. registration or public disclosure.  Similarly, they reinforce existing views of Executive authority to conclude sole-executive agreements on defense-related matters for the United States.  So, if everyone's OK with such...

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11 Mar

It is always unpleasant to get lectured by foreign governments about "violating international law", but this is something U.S. government officials should be used to.  Still, it must be galling for the new U.S. administration to be lectured by Brazil's president over U.S. non-compliance with a WTO ruling on cotton subsidies. The United States must comply with a World Trade Organization...

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08 Mar

As I have noted earlier, there is a pitched battle between victims of Pan Am 73 terrorist hijacking over the distribution of treaty funds secured by the United States for American victims in a 2008 diplomatic settlement with Libya. The treaty and Executive Order stipulate that the money shall be distributed solely for the benefit of United States nationals,...

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27 Feb

The BBC reports: The European Court of Justice has ruled that Israeli goods made in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank cannot be considered Israeli. This means goods made by Israelis or Jews in the West Bank cannot benefit from a trade deal giving Israel preferential access to EU markets. At first glance, this seems like the correct result, especially given the...

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23 Feb

That's the question, sort of, raised in Totes-Isotoner v. United States, the most interesting tariff classification case you will ever read. Under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, men's glove have a tariff rate of 14 percent whereas gloves "for other persons" have a rate of 12.6 percent. An importer of gloves, Totes-Isotoner, argues that these duties unconstitutionally discriminate on...

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