ISDS Case Map
Korea
The Lee Myung-bak administration announced plans Friday to submit a new S Korea-EU Free Trade Agreement ratification motion to the National Assembly correcting a translation error present in the text submitted in October 2010. However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade did not independently verify translations in the languages of 21 other EU nations.
The US-Korea FTA must be opposed not only because of its own terrible effects on US and Korean workers, peoples and communities, but also because it would open the door to similar disastrous agreements with Panama and Colombia.
While South Korea seeks to further its development by selling to Colombia its industrial goods, Colombia’s elite pretend to develop the country by selling coal, oil, coffee and flowers (and probably farmland, which, thanks to the paramilitaries, they own) to South Korea, says Colombia Reports
On intellectual property protection, the FTA contains the extension of patent rights for pharmaceuticals and data exclusivity, both provisions ardently fought over in the ongoing EU-India FTA negotiations.
Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa, in a break from the Obama administration and the United Auto Workers union, opposes the Korea free trade agreement. "The last thing America’s middle class needs right now is ’Son of NAFTA,’ " Hoffa said.
EU companies that may benefit include pharmaceutical producers GlaxoSmithKline Plc, chemical makers BASF SE, and consumer electronics manufacturers Royal Philips Electronics NV. Farm exporters, shipping businesses and the financial- and legal-services industries also stand to gain.
Europe gave its final approval on Thursday to a major free trade deal with South Korea, eliminating most tariffs in a pact hailed as a model for future agreements with other Asian nations.
Competition between South Korean and Japanese businesses in India will likely intensify following New Delhi's signing of a free trade agreement with Tokyo this week, a local trade body said Friday.
The Obama administration's effort to convince Congress to pass a NAFTA-style trade pact with South Korea on foreign relations and national security grounds took a beating last month when a large delegation of Korean opponents of the pact came to Washington.
Large Korean conglomerates such as Samsung and Hyundai are getting ready to enter Peru in view of the upcoming entry into force of the Free Trade Agreement scheduled for April
