Bill and Scott take a look at recent Chinese export restrictions on U.S. companies, examine the USTR&#x27;s visits to India and Uzbekistan, and dig into a newly announced U.S. probe of German pharmaceutical pricing.

Chinese Export Restrictions, USTR in India and Uzbekistan, and German Pharmaceutical Pricing

The Trade Guys

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** The Trade Guys

## Transcript

I'm Scott. I'm Bill. And we're The Trade Guys. We're listening to The Trade Guys, a podcast produced by CSIS, where we talk about trade in terms that everyone can understand. I'm Alex Kisling, and I'm here with Scott Miller and Bill Reich, the CSIS Trade Guys.

Thanks for listening to The Trade Guys. On today's episode, we take a look at recent Chinese export restrictions on US companies, examine the US trade representatives' visits to India and Uzbekistan, and dig into a newly announced US probe of German pharmaceutical pricing. All that and more on today's episode of The Trade Guys.

Trade Guys, I want to start this week with an update on a Supreme Court case that we discussed a few weeks ago. And this is a case that just had a ruling come down a few days ago, the Alien Tort Statute. And Bill, I know you've been tracking this. So before we get into our other topics, I wanted to turn to you for a readout of what the court said. Yes, just a short note, and we can put it in because there's no customs refund update this week. And so we're going to have a court update instead.

This was a case that has followed many in the Alien Tort Statute, which we did talk about before. It's called Cisco v. Doe. And the allegation concerned whether or not Cisco had aided and abetted the Chinese in setting up a surveillance system that, among other things, persecuted the Falun Gong. The court never addressed the merits of that particular allegation.

What the court did, though, was, and they had this phrase in their opinion, they closed the door on the utilization of the Alien Tort Statute for this kind of lawsuit. And what the court said was that it was an elaboration of what the court had said in some earlier decisions, that the Alien Tort Statute, which is just like one sentence from 1789, is a jurisdictional statute that says these lawsuits belong in federal court. They don't belong in state courts, which was a big issue in 1789.

But the sentence does not create a cause of action, that if you want to have a cause of action for your lawsuit, Congress has to do that. And actually, Congress did that with respect to torture in a separate statute, the Torture Victims Protection Act. But what the courts have steadily done over the years is narrow the applicability of this statute. And the recent applicable ruling before this one was in a case called Sosa v. Alvarez-Baché.

And in the Sosa case, the court ruled that it was a jurisdictional statute and they couldn't find a cause of action in that case. But they left the door open to the possibility that there might be one. And in this case, the Cisco case, what the courts basically did is to shut the door and say there is no cause of action created by this statute. It's a null set.

And therefore, I think the implication is for companies, well, for American companies, since it's an American statute, that it's going to be much more difficult for them to b...

Chinese Export Restrictions, USTR in India and Uzbekistan, and German Pharmaceutical Pricing

Transcript

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Chinese Export Restrictions, USTR in India and Uzbekistan, and German Pharmaceutical Pricing

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.