News

New WTO Trade Restrictions Report

A recent WTO report finds that WTO members introduced fewer trade-restrictive measures from mid-October 2016 to mid-October 2017 compared to the previous year. At $169 billion, the import-facilitating measures adopted during the review period covered twice the value of the import-restrictive measures implemented, which totaled $79 billion. The initiation of trade remedy investigations remained the most frequently applied trade-restrictive measure at around 46% of the total, with the initiation of antidumping investigations accounting for 83% of all trade remedy initiations. India led the way with 55 new AD investigations during July 2016-June 2017, followed by the US (47), Argentina (21), Canada (19), Turkey (19), and Australia (18).

You can read more about the report here.

Court Rules on Signing Contracts

A recent U.S. Court of Appeals held that an arbitral clause in a contract must be signed by the parties in order to be enforceable. The defendant sought to compel arbitration based on an employment contract between the seaman and the vessel owner. The court ruled in its that “the litigant prove the agreement is in writing and ‘signed by the parties” in order for a legitimate claim to be filed.

You can read the full decision here.