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.
The deal as negotiated is in principle a neocolonial, extractivist instrument: intended to secure EU imports of commodities and raw materials from South America, while increasing EU exports of industrial and chemical products.
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.
A Free Trade Agreement between Ecuador and Canada is not in the interests of Indigenous peoples, territories or the environment. The FTA will only be another instrument of corporate power, wielded by the national elites to deepen the rationale for devastation.
Civil groups urged the European Parliament to step up pressure on Vietnam to improve its dismal human and labor rights records during a review of the implementation of the European Union-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement.
The British government’s investment minster has said the third round of talks that could eventually lead to a free trade agreement between the UK and the GCC have been completed successfully and a fourth session should be held in London later this year.
Indian and British negotiators will be seeking a landing zone on digital trade and investor protection as they hold another round of free trade talks in New Delhi.
A number of EU countries spoke out against reviving the EU-Mercosur trade deal during a meeting of agriculture ministers in Brussels on Monday 20 March. But with an agreement already hammered out, room for change is limited.
As leaked by Friends of the Earth Europe, Ecologistas en Acción, European Coordination Via Campesina, Collectif national Stop CETA-Mercosur, Aitec, PowerShift e.V. Germany, Handel Anders.
The so-called "sunset provision" reflects the lingering working-class distrust of globalization in the US that helped Donald Trump get elected president back in 2016.
It includes stories about the rise of trade in services and popular resistance; the EU-India FTA and its impact on Indian women; Kenyan health CSOs’ concerns about the Kenya-US trade deal: https://youtu.be/HHBbfjvjylY (in English with French and Spanish subtitles.)