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.
LONDON, March 23 (Reuters) - Kenya expects to finish talks for a trade and investment deal with the United States by the end of this year and to sign the agreement by April 2024, Trade Minister Moses Kuria said.
Trade and Investments Cabinet Secretary Moses Kuria yesterday met the United Kingdom’s Minister for International Trade Nigel Huddleston in London during the first UK-Kenya Economic Partnership Council meeting.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) is taking measures to promote the negotiations of a FTA with the Southern Common Market (Mercosur - including Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay), which is expected to be a driving force for Vietnam to tap the Latin American market.
India and the European Union (EU) on Saturday concluded the fourth round of talks for a comprehensive free trade agreement in Brussels, a a move aimed at further strengthening economic ties between the two sides.
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.)