The Custom-House

"Potential Challenges to U.S. Farm Subsidies in the WTO"

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) has recently updated a report on Potential Challenges to U.S. Farm Subsidies in the WTO (Randy Schnepf and Jasper Womach, April 26).  From the summary:

The Administration's trade treaty with Congress

Here is a link to the text of the agreement, and to abstracts provided by the Administration, and the Ways and Means Committee: The content of changes in U.S. trade negotiating policy (Ben Muse, May 11).

I.M. Destler of the Peterson Institute has prepared a very helpful working paper on the recent negotiations between the Administration and Congress over the appropriate provisions for FTAs: American Trade Politics in 2007: Building Bipartisan Compromise (May 2007).

So. Korea releases text of Korea-U.S. FTA

So. Korea released the text of the Korea-U.S. FTA agreement Friday morning in Seoul: S. Korea publicizes full text of FTA with U.S., criticism expected (Yonhap News, April 25):

Exchange rate miscellany

On the 9th, three House subcommittees held a joint hearing on Hearing on Currency Manipulation and Its Effect on U.S. Businesses and Workers.  The link has the announcement and written testimony of the witnesses.

Dingel on "IP in PTAs"

Jonathan Dingel links to a recent New Yorker piece by James Surowiecki on intellectual property provisions in U.S. bilateral trade agreements in general, and in the U.S.-South Korean agreement in particular: IP in PTAs (May11).  Dingel supplements this with a link to a very useful 1999 seminar paper on TRIPS and the WTO by Arvind Panagariya .  Two good links!

CFIUS Reform moves through Senate Banking Committee

The papers say that the Senate Banking Committee has settled on its version of a bill to reform the process the U.S. uses for security vetting of foreign investments.  The reforms center on defining the processes that should be followed by the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS): Senate moves forward on Cfius overhaul (Jeremy Grant, Financial Times, May 16).

$20,000 prize for the best essay on "Private Sector Development: Creating Markets, Transforming Lives"

The World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the Financial Times (FT), are offering US$20,000 for the best 4,000 word (max) essay on "Private Sector Development: Creating Markets, Transforming Lives. (all entries are due by this September 30).

The content of changes in U.S. trade negotiating policy

Last Fall Democrats took control of Congress.  For several months, the Administration and Democratic Congressional leaders have been "negotiating" changes in U.S. negotiating guidelines.  Yesterday, they announced that they had reached an agreement.  Here is the text of the agreement posted at the House Ways and Means Committee web site: Peru & Panama FTA Changes .

CFIUS reform is coming up in the Senate

Peter Kaplan reports that the Senate is getting ready to take up the reform of the process by which the U.S. conducts security reviews of foreign investments  (Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, or "CFIUS" reform): Senators plan new bill on foreign takeover reviews (Reuters, May 10).

It sounds like this comes up next week:

Connecticut Democrat Dodd and Alabama Republican Richard Shelby said the bill was set for a committee vote on Wednesday.

The House took action earlier this year and I think they did a reasonably good job (CFIUS Reform: We Might Get Lucky - Ben Muse, Feb 19; House passes CFIUS reform legislation - Ben Muse, Mar 1).  Kaplan writes that the Senate may take a different approach:

The bill is meant to be a compromise between CFIUS reform passed by the Senate last year and a more business-friendly version passed by the House in February, one source said...

The Senate version of the CFIUS reform bill approved last year drew opposition from business groups because it would have required CFIUS to notify members of Congress of pending takeovers before making a recommendation on them.

In a related story, Ian Swanson reports that the Administration released a statement today to reassure foreign investors that they were welcome - despite last year's Dubai Ports World debate, and ongoing efforts to reform the CFIUS process: Bush invites foreign investment, vows balance with national security.  (The Hill, May 11)

IT and FTAs

Abbe Brown, Andres Guadamuz, and Jordan Hatcher, of the University of Edinburgh, have written a working paper on the information technology (IT) issues dealt with in the recent FTA between the U.S., several Central American countries, and the Dominican Republic (DR_CAFTA): The Impact of Free Trade Agreements on Information Technology Based Business .

This is a survey or scoping paper, introducing a wide range of information technology issues as they were handled in the DR-CAFTA, and identifying topics ripe for further research.  Various sections look at e-commerce, intermediary liability, intellectual property, internet domain names, copywrite law, measures to inhibit efforts to circumvent "technologies ... to restrict unauthorised access to works subject to copyright," competition law, and telecommunications.

The authors preface the survey of issues with brief discussions of the legal context of FTAs, and the specific background to the DR-CAFTA. 

The report is a product of the  AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology law in the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.  Brown, Guadmauz and Hatcher have been reporting on the project through the Free Trade Blog, which focuses on "the impact of FTAs on IT-based business, with a focus on the DR-CAFTA agreement."

This will be interesting:

We anticipate this report being transformed into a wiki and for further contributions to be developed via web-based. We hope to maintain the project’s momentum through the wiki, and details of this will be posted on the blog.

I think this report will be very helpful to people, like me, looking for an introduction to the range of information technology issues raised in FTAs to which the U.S. is a party.  The paper itself is meant to be the first - foundational - stage in a longer research project.  Next up:

In terms of immediate further work, we propose investigating the present and future impact of UDRP provisions in DR-CAFTA countries, and liability of Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

The UDRP reference is to the "Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP)", "a dispute resolution policy governing domain name disputes based on existing trade mark ownership."  The authors plan to continue to post on this effort to the project web site.