Clinternships

Someone asked me in an email what I was doing on my internships, and that it would be nice to hear about that as well as the things that happen travelling, etc. I talked about my internship in São Paulo a little bit ago, but I didn't go into great detail. I won't really here either, but I will talk a little more about what I have been doing.

At my internship in São Paulo, I worked almost exclusively with international trade. Most of the world's countries are members of the World Trade Organization and these countries have adopted WTO regulations into their own legal systems. So the WTO regulations are uniform pretty much for all of the members. One of the things I worked the most on was antidumping regulations. Before my first meeting about this on my first day, I said: yeah, I know what dumping is, its when you throw trash in a garbage dump. I was glad that I looked it up beforehand. It wasn't what I thought it was. Remember how I mentioned that I am going to be doing a master's in international political economy? I don't know how I got accepted for a program with economy in the title when I never took an undergrad class in economics.

Anyway, dumping has nothing to do with trash. It is when a company from one country sells a product in a different country for a lower price than it sells it in its own country. So if China sells magnets in Brazil for ten cents apiece and sells them in China for $1, it is considered unfair and Brazil can take measures to fix that by placing a fee on the companies that do that. Each country has the regulations, but they are not exactly the same. Some of the procedures are different, but the essence is the same. These regulations are antidumping regulations. I did a lot of work on researching US law, investigations in the US, Pakistan, Brazil, and so forth. I think that international trade is very interesting. It is also unfair, according to the WTO accords, for a government to provide a subsidy for a certain product. China does this a lot, and so Brazil can slap a little tariff on the applicable importers Chinese steel or whatever it is to make up for the help the companies in China have received. It is one of the most international factors of domestic law, because without a foreign party, you can't have international trade law! I worked on a few other things, but that was 98% of my internship there.

Now I am in Rio de Janeiro to take a two-week course on doing business in Brazil and a two-week internship with an affiliate of an American law firm. I guess that I will talk about these things later, but I finished the course and now have finished one week of my internship. At my new internship, I have worked on a few different things. The American firm whose affiliate I work for is big on oil and gas, so a lot of the stuff we do there is based on that. I helped create a presentation on working with Petrobras, the government oil company here in Brazil. I didn't know this before, but the government actually only owns half. Individual investors own the other half. I helped create a presentation for clients on trade secrets in the U.S. Trade secrets are formulas, recipes, etc. that are not patented. This is the gist of trade secrets: you can't work for Coke, take the recipe to Pepsi, and create the Coke using the recipe. If Pepsi takes a bottle of Coke, figures out on its own how to make it, and then makes Coke, no problem. Then I worked on a presentation on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits American companies, individuals, or subsidiaries from making bribes for obtaining work benefits. It has all been very interesting.

This week I also sat in on a meeting with with a company that is hiring a guy to help get contracts. Instead of paying him, they are giving him a percentage of the company. All of these things have to be worked out in the contract of course, and the meeting was a little over my head because I do not have a strong background in finance or securities. But a few days later, I was able to advise a lawyer in my firm about a contract. That was kind of fun. He asked me if we should put a specific provision in or leave it out. I thought it was pretty important, so I said, you gotta put that in baby!

So, that is what I have been doing. I think the last week will be more of the same. Then I travel for a week and a few days, and then head to WA for a family reunion. Now I will write about Rio.