Posts tagged ‘U.S.’
U.S. Senate Passes Counter-Productive Countervailing Duties Bill
Last month, the U.S. Senate passed Bill S. 1619, the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011 (“the Act”), which is aimed at penalizing foreign producers in favour of their U.S. domestic counterparts.1 The Act has been introduced but has not yet passed through the House of Representatives. Section 4 of the Act outlines the method by which the Secretary of the Treasury will determine if a foreign currency is “fundamentally misaligned”, and if it makes that determination, sections 10 and 11 provide the mechanism by which the government would be able to impose countervailing duties (CVDs). In general terms, CVDs are a tool, permissible in international trade law, whereby a government is able to impose a duty on imported goods when the exporting country’s government has provided the exporter a subsidy.
China is the obvious target of the Act. Populist politicians in the U.S. in recent years have relied on criticizing China in the hopes of appealing to citizens who believe that the primary cause of high unemployment rates in the U.S. is the migration of manufacturing jobs overseas.2 The problem with the Act, however, is that it fails to comply with the U.S.’s WTO obligations, and will most likely be successfully challenged by China if it ever becomes law. The Act attempts to classify an undervalued currency as a “subsidy” to exporters. The Agreement on Subsidies…
The Canadian Government & Omar Khadr’s Plight
On 25 October 2010, more than 8 years after being brought into US custody, Omar Khadr, pleaded guilty to murder in violation of the law of war, attempted murder in violation of the law of war, conspiracy, providing material support for terrorism, and spying. On 31 October a Military Commission at the U.S. Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, sentenced him to 40 years in confinement.
Mr. Khadr, however, will be imprisoned for a maximum of 8 years, on account of a plea agreement[1] which was signed, at least in part, on the understanding that, having served no less than a year of his sentence in the U.S., the Canadian Government would be amenable to an application to serve the remainder of his sentence in Canada, subject to Canadian rules of parole. On 23 October the Government of Canada, in a diplomatic note[2] to the U.S. Government, expressed its “inclination to favourably consider” such an application.
The terms of the plea agreement are severe. Among other things, Mr. Khadr waived any claim to credit for time served, agreed to direct counsel to submit a motion to dismiss his petition for habeas corpus in his case pending before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, as well as all claims currently pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In addition, while…
Is Sorry Enough?
Saying sorry isn’t always easy to do. It often takes a mature person to demonstrate to others that not only does one recognize wrongs done, but that one also feels remorse for that.
However, when an apology comes from the government for a wrong committed to individuals, the reaction tends to be much less gracious and questions of legality quickly arise. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently apologized to the government of Guatemala for the intentional infection of Guatemalan prisoners and handicapped residents with syphilis and gonorrhea as part of a medical research program conducted from 1946 – 1948, where at least hundreds of people were directly infected. According to the New York Times, the researcher who discovered the report claims that the Guatemalan project was co-sponsored by the U.S. Public Health Service, the NIH, the Pan-American Health Sanitary Bureau (now the Pan American Health Organization) and the Guatemalan government. Questions of state legality includes a new twist under international law: how should the U.S apology be handled and is there an obligation for further reparations?
While a trend has developed for an international legal system which imposes positive obligations on states, the first draft articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts were only recently passed by the UN General Assembly in 2001. Still, the General Assembly had recommended that the International Law Commission review State Accountability…
BY Brett Hodgins
FILED UNDER
Environment
Law of the Sea
Public International Law
Satirical
A League of Their Own
In recent years China’s prominence on the world stage has grown rapidly. With consistently high GDP growth, a swelling middle class, and high-profile international events such as the 2008 Beijing Olympics or the Expo 2010 in Shanghai, many recognize China as an emerging superpower. But this growth has not been consistent across all fronts, and in some respects China lags far behind other world powers. Recent events have made one area in particular stand out in this regard: oil spills.
On July 16th in the Chinese port city of Dalian, the explosion of two oil pipelines caused thousands of barrels of oil to begin gushing into the sea. The slick has since expanded to cover hundreds of square kilometres of water and spread upwards of 90km down the coast. The spill – and China’s cack-handed response – is clearly modelled after the U.S.’s ongoing gulf coast saga – but it’s a pale imitation. Unlike the American spill, there seems to be no threat of the oil being carried to other nations’ coasts. Yet even Australia has managed to pull off a massive spill affecting its neighbours. If China wants to get into the oil spill big leagues, they’ll have to find a way to go international.
But while the international oil spill scene is characterised by intense competition, there is a notable lack of corresponding cooperation. It’s…
Sliding Through the Cracks: U.S. Private Military Contractors and International Humanitarian Law
“Some of the newest armed non-state parties operating in unstable states and conflict situations come from an unusual source: the private sector.”[1]
Expansion of U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan has made private military and security contractors (PMSCs) virtually indispensable. In her book One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy, Allison Stanger reveals that last year, PMSCs accounted for 48 percent of the U.S. Defense Department’s workforce in Iraq and 57 percent in Afghanistan.[2] “Without a multinational contractor force to fill the gap,” she argues, “we would need a draft to execute these twin interventions.”[3] Hired help it seems, is the only way for a thinly stretched U.S. military to sustain current operations.
“On a superficial level, the shift means that most of those representing the United States … will be wearing the scruffy cargo pants, polo shirts, baseball caps and other casual accoutrements favored by overseas contractors rather than the fatigues and flight suits of the military.”[4] A closer look reveals that today’s private contractors do everything from providing security services at U.S. embassies[5] to performing “enhanced interrogations” – a.k.a. torture[6] – at Abu Ghraib and loading bombs onto remotely piloted Predator drones that lethally target members of Al Qaeda.[7]
This growing involvement in core…
