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Today’s FTA frenzy
13-Feb-2008
GM trials in India threaten trade ties
13-Feb-2008 Times of India
India finds itself increasingly on the defensive in agricultural trade for permitting field trials across the country in a host of genetically modified food crops — rice, brinjal, okra, potato, tomato and groundnuts — and thereby exposing conventional crops to the risk of transgenic contamination. A case in point is a rather dodgy no-contamination certificate that the regulator, Genetic Engineering Approval Committee, was forced to give two months ago in response to a restriction imposed by Russia on import of rice, groundnuts and sesame seeds from India.
Corporate globalisation: Standing at the end of the road
13-Feb-2008 CounterPunch
Corporate globalization, savagely embodied by NAFTA, is not just a threat to Mexican farmers and rural villagers. The economic, health, and social damage created by industrial agriculture, corporate globalization, and the patenting and gene-splicing of transgenic plants and animals, are inexorably leading to universal "bioserfdom " for farmers, deteriorating health for consumers, a destabilized climate (energy intensive industrial agriculture and long-distance food transportation and processing account, directly or indirectly, for 40% of all climate-disrupting greenhouse gases), tropical deforestation, and a rapid depletion of oil supplies.
SKorea MP stages sit-in protest to block US free trade deal
13-Feb-2008 AFP
A South Korean lawmaker has locked himself inside a parliamentary committee room to try to block moves to ratify a free trade deal with the United States
Tunisian and Algerian businessmen discuss free-trade zone
13-Feb-2008 Maghrebia
Businessmen from Algeria and Tunisia are pushing for an FTA between the two countries
Panama, Guatemala ready free trade
13-Feb-2008 Prensa Latina
Panama said Tuesday that negotiations for a free trade agreement with Guatemala is 90 percent advanced. Panama plans to negotiate a similar accord with the EU en bloc.
Colonisation redux: new agreements, old games
13-Feb-2008
East Africa: Ministers propose bigger regional trading bloc
13-Feb-2008 AllAfrica.com
East Africa’s trade ministers have proposed the formation of a larger trading bloc to eliminate friction among states over deals signed with partners outside the continent. The proposal made at a meeting of the Trade ministers in Arusha last week calls for the formation of a grand Free Trade Area (FTA) consisting of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) and the Southern Africa Development Community (Sadc).
Canberra wants Thai services sector opened
12-Feb-2008 Bangkok Post
The Australian government will negotiate for greater opening of Thailand’s services sector this year under the Thailand-Australia Free Trade Agreement
The specter in JPEPA
12-Feb-2008 The specter in JPEPA
One does not have to be a constitutionalist, a legalist, an economist, an environmentalist, and, yes, even a pundit to see that many provisions in the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement are so frightfully flawed and to realize that it could very well become an environmental and economic nightmare for this country and its people.
Liberal party blocks talks on Korea-US FTA ratification
12-Feb-2008 Yonhap
A scheduled parliamentary discussion on the ratification of a South Korea-US free trade deal was called off Monday as members of the Democratic Labour Party blockaded the meeting venue. Meanwhile, the head of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions — a militant labor umbrella group — left for a trip to the United States Monday, vowing to nullify the motion in cooperation with US labor groups.
Sugar industry drops bid to restrict trade
12-Feb-2008 The Statesman
The US sugar industry announced Friday it was abandoning efforts to insert a provision in the federal farm bill that would renew restrictions on the sugar trade between the United States and Mexico.
TRIPS, bilateralism and patents: how they are failing both the developed and the developing world and what to do about it
11-Feb-2008 ANU
Luigi Palombi discusses TRIPS, post-TRIPS bilateralism and patents in the context of biological resources and traditional knowledge and seeks to provide a solution to the present intellectual property deadlock between the developed and developing worlds.
El Salvador’s “American-made” Terrorism Act in corporate play
11-Feb-2008 MWC News
Critics of CAFTA say it was no coincidence that the anti-terrorism legislation was enacted six months after the trade agreement. Update on the case against the Suchitoto 13.
Africa: Mass protests against EU-enforced neo-liberalism
11-Feb-2008 Socialist Youth
A part of the mass movement against the EU EPAs is drawing the conclusion that they have to find other partners in the fight against neo-liberalism. The coalition we need is an international one, of the working people and poor, that struggles against capitalism.
The European party agrees amending the Association Agreement
9-Feb-2008 El Khabar
The EU says it will revise the its Association Agreement with Algeria, pointing out competition from China and enhanced ’security’ interests
Commerce ministry opposes China FTA
9-Feb-2008 Business Standard
India’s commerce ministry has endorsed India Inc’s stand against signing a free trade agreement (FTA) with China until it becomes a market economy that follows transparent pricing of manufactured goods and services.
Tokyo ready to reopen FTA talks with Seoul: report
8-Feb-2008 Yonhap
The Japanese government hopes to reopen free trade negotiations with South Korea that have been stalled for over three years due to differences between the two sides, a Japanese newspaper said Friday.
Mexicans say: Integrate this!
8-Feb-2008 FPIF
Despite various and sometimes divergent interests, the Mexican campaign against NAFTA is finding a focus.
Why Afro-Colombians oppose the Colombia FTA
8-Feb-2008 The Hill
The US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is considered a non-starter in the US Congress because the country is the world’s deadliest for union activists. Less known, but equally disturbing is the systematic violence now confronting Afro-Colombians.