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bilateralism & multilateralism


NFUniversity: Colonial roots of modern free trade agreements
This talk will explore the colonial origins of modern international trade. Geopolitics, power relations, and corporate interests have shaped trade rules for over 500 years before it reached its current form.
The two faces of free trade
Whereas free trade was once the central cause of progressive reformers seeking to combat entrenched interests on behalf of ordinary people, now it is the bête noire of both right-wing nationalists and the mainstream left. To understand why attitudes changed so radically, one must follow the money.
Free Trade Agreements are Failed Trade Agreements. An alternative is now urgent and necessary
La Via Campesina’s Statement and Open call for Endorsement
Farmers’ Protest: Why are farmers demanding India’s withdrawal from WTO?
Farmers started protesting with a new set of demands including India’s withdrawal from the World Trade Organization and scrapping all Free Trade Agreements.
Overview of the implications for developing countries/LDCs of the JSI E-commerce text (Revision 5)
Developing countries and least developed countries (LDCs) face growing pressure to participate in and adopt the outcomes of plurilateral negotiations on electronic commerce.
US drops digital trade demands at WTO to allow room for stronger tech regulation
US Trade Representative Katherine Tai has dropped longstanding US digital trade demands in World Trade Organization talks in order to give Congress room to regulate big tech firms.
Call to action: 10 September 2023 – International day of action against the WTO and free trade agreements
It has been twenty years since the World Trade Organization’s imperialist, neoliberal and neo-colonial free trade policies led to the sacrifice of one of our peasant leaders at the gates of the Ministerial meeting venue in Cancun, Mexico.
India plans to challenge EU carbon tax at WTO
The exporters’ body warned the EU plan could make India’s free trade agreements with other countries and a proposed pact with the EU "redundant" as the prices of many exporters’ goods would rise.
WTO e-commerce moratorium: FTAs as the logical next step?
FTAs are providing a way forward for WTO Members who are adamant about the continued application of the e-commerce moratorium.
The rise of trade in services: corporate manoeuvres and popular resistance
The idea of ‘Trade in services’ is an artificial creation of the late 1970s and 1980s, designed to bring the social and public phenomenon of services under international ‘trade’ rules that would work for corporations.
Rigging the rules: How Big Tech uses stealth “trade” agreements and how we can stop them
Efforts to curb the ruinous business practices of the Big Tech corporations are at risk of being impeded by “digital trade” rules negotiated in international trade pacts. It is time to overturn this anti-regulatory agenda in favour of a governance model that prioritizes digital industrialization and data as a public good.
More free trade will not solve the food crisis
WTO has lost the trust of the people, and all governments must keep agricultural matters out of free trade agreements.
India has no plans to join the WTO govt procurement agreement
India has “no plans" to join the government procurement agreement grouping of the World Trade Organization, but is open to negotiating such agreements as part of bilateral deals.
Government pledges protection for bilateral investors on AfCFTA
The Government of Ghana has pledged to protect Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) for countries that sign agreement with it for reciprocal foreign direct returns on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
Multinational corporations and COVID-19: Intellectual property rights vs. human rights
Transnational companies today rely more than ever on IPR to structure their global value chains, writes Peter Rossman
Patently unfair: Can waivers help solve COVID vaccine inequality?
The WTO General Council gathered virtually on Monday for the first of two days of talks amid increasing calls from civil society, states and nongovernmental actors to temporarily waive patents for COVID-19 vaccines and other coronavirus-related medical products.
Intellectual property and COVID-19 medicines: why a WTO waiver may not be enough
The COVID-19 pandemic, and the race to make vaccines and other useful technologies more accessible to people around the world, has once again highlighted the tension between intellectual property rights and the promotion of public health.
From globalization to ecological and solidarity reshoring
In Brussels, the virus of free trade and the impunity of multinationals is far from receding. But social and ecological relocalization seems to us the only alternative that could embody a desirable collective horizon.
USTR Lighthizer says bilateral trade pacts conflict with multilateral trading system
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the world needed either a multilateral system to govern global trade or a series of bilateral agreements, but the two were in conflict with each other.
How capitalism and other viruses are ravaging the Global South
The economic hegemony exerted by the trade regime — and related financial structures — mirrors and extends old colonial patterns of exploitation and dispossession. Its policies represent our “normal.”