The heart of the matter: extradition

[Nate tha\\\' Great]

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Rather, the $64,000 question is how likely foreign governments are to cooperate with US extradition requests.

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It is my understanding that most extradition treaties require that the crime in question be considered a crime in both countries, correct? Under this notion, the extradition treaty between the UK and the USA does not apply.

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BTW, I think the WTO could wind up being quite important in all of this, and there's even some chance that it winds up being a relatively substantial international trade dispute.

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I wish that I could share your optimism. The WTO told the USA to get its IG laws in line with international standards, and the USA responded with an emphatic "[censored] You!" For years our country's government has all but ignored the WTO, so why would we start paying attention now?

I mean, really, does anyone expect the US Government to cave under threat of possible trade sanctions from Antigua?

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Drew:

The heart of the question is this: how likely is a company based in country XX to care that it is violating US law? If XX is the United Kingdom, then the answer is "a great deal", while if XX is Antigua, the answer is "not very much at all".

The WTO itself is not that important in the immediate term, except to the extent that the US' refsual to adhere to Antigua's existing complaint in the WTO will embolden Antigua and other small nations to ignore the US law. However, the WTO could become more important if the Department of Justice does something crazy, the US attempts to impose sanctions on a country like Costa Rica, or one of the companies based in a large nation decides to fight this.