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News from the movements

Public services in the crosshairs
19-Apr-2023 TNI
The impacts of investment protection regimes on the public services sector in Latin America and the Caribbean.
UK membership in Pacific trade deal threatens Canadian climate action
7-Apr-2023 The Monitor
Canada should join Australia and New Zealand in neutralizing lopsided corporate protections in CPTPP.
US agenda revealed at IPEF talks in Bali
5-Apr-2023 AFTINET
The summaries of US inputs at the recent Bali round of negotiations for the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) reveal US pressure of the other 13 states to adopt US standards.
How Clive Palmer is suing Australia for $300 billion with the help of an obscure legal clause (and Christian Porter)
4-Apr-2023 The Conversation
Australian business figure Clive Palmer is suing the Australian government for almost A$300 billion in an international tribunal, having lost a case against the Western Australian government he took all the way to the High Court.
Joining Pacific trade deal is ‘reckless gamble’, campaigners say
31-Mar-2023 Global Justice Now
Joining the Pacific trade deal is a reckless gamble by a government willing to sacrifice British farmers, workers and the planet in its desperation for a symbolic success.
EU digital trade rules: undermining attempts to rein in Big Tech
28-Mar-2023 The Left in the European Parliament
This report shows how Big Tech companies are working to constrain the ability of EU democratic bodies to regulate their activities in the public interest through “trade” agreements, which are binding and permanent.
Canada must cancel its free trade deal with Israel
23-Mar-2023 The Monitor
Commitments to “inclusive” trade are meaningless if they support violations of international law.
Breaking: Civil society denounce leaked joint instrument on EU-Mercosur deal as blatant greenwashing
23-Mar-2023 Friends of the Earth Europe
Documents leaked reveal that the EU-Mercosur deal’s proposed annex, supposedly intended to safeguard the environment, climate and human rights, does nothing to achieve this.
Philippines’ RCEP ratification: a deadly blow for the country’s agriculture
21-Mar-2023 MASIPAG
The country’s economic sovereignty that will supposedly provide a ground for the flourishing of local agriculture and production has been once again gnawed by global corporate interests.
IPEF is only to save US corporations from crisis while continue to eliminate people’s rights
15-Mar-2023 Solidaritas Perempuan
Indonesian Civil Society held a protest today in front of the US Embassy in Jakarta to express its rejection of the IPEF. In the midst of the global economic crisis, the US is trying to rebuild its national industrialisation with a less open free trade agreement and push for policy harmonisation based on US standards.
Development opportunities or challenges
10-Mar-2023 Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung
Looking at the proposed Free Trade Agreement between India and the European Union.
The rise of trade in services: corporate manoeuvres and popular resistance
6-Mar-2023 bilaterals.org
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.
EU-Mercosur: a nightmare for nature
6-Mar-2023 Greenpeace
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.
Rigging the rules: How Big Tech uses stealth “trade” agreements and how we can stop them
2-Mar-2023 Third World Network
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.
Ecuador-Canada Free Trade Agreement: a new attack on communities, Indigenous peoples, and the environment
2-Mar-2023 Mining Watch
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 societies call on European Parliament to pressure Vietnam on human rights
2-Mar-2023 Radio Free Asia
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.
Mercosur files
1-Mar-2023 Friends of the Earth Europe
Despite the ongoing devastation, and with the Amazon likely at an irreversible environmental tipping point, the European Union continues to push for a free trade agreement with Mercosur which would increase the pressure on the region.
Emerging issues in the IPEF trade negotiations: A critical summary
28-Feb-2023 Ibon International
The US is trying to present IPEF as a rethinking of the aggressive trade liberalisation model it championed for the last four decades. At its core, however, IPEF appears to be mainly a geopolitical tool for the US to maintain its hegemony in the Asia-Pacific.
There are many ways to rebuild Brazil: EU-Mercosur trade deal is not one of them
24-Feb-2023 Euractiv
It is time to fundamentally change trade relations to put the environment, climate and human rights at the centre and dismantle the legacy of neo-colonial economics.
No to RCEP! don’t make the Philippines an “ukay-ukay” Republic!!
24-Feb-2023 The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas
The Senate should withhold its concurrence with the treaty until the necessary policies, strategies, and programs are emplaced so that the RCEP benefits, and does not harm, the agricultural sector and the economy as a whole.