Apple’s patent protectionism

The GATT Panel recommended that Member governments ask the USA to amend it's legislation to bring it back into conformity with the GATT. But this was the middle of the Uruguay Round of negotiations, focussing on the TRIPS negotiations on intellectual property. The USA took no action as recommended by the Panel. Finally, in 2000 the…

Why the EUA speaks Spanish

Another astonishing info-graphic from the New York Times; not the best designed on-line paper (the Guardian takes that prize, in my view, followed by Le Monde and the Wall St Journal), but easily the best at visual presentation of data.

China worries about U.S. carbon tariffs

Tung, the former Chief Executive of Hong Kong, was talking about the Waxman-Markey bill that provides for 'border adjustments' should cap-and-trade costs for energy-intensive industries not be fully offset by U.S. government subsidies. China has been campaigning against this draft legislation since it's introduction.

Let’s hope this means more clarity

Lamy did not mean—as this news report suggests—that the 'second track' would be series of bilateral deals. That's a long-standing U.S. fallback position (from the days of GATT), but I doubt Kirk had that in mind either. Here's the official account of what he said.

Good idea or insidious threat?

But who, other than China, would loose if this idea worked and the Renminbi was revalued? Most of the rest of the world. Especially economies with a comparative advantage in agricultural production (Australia, New Zealand, Latin America) for whom imported Chinese deflation of manufactures prices offsets the EU's depression of agricultural prices (and inflation of manufactures…