ISDS Case Map
labour | workers' rights
A bill sent by President Bush to Congress on Monday enacting a free trade agreement with the Arab Gulf state of Oman triggered a rebuke from the top Senate Democrat, who said it omitted a provision barring goods made with forced labor.
The crisis in the automotive components sector will continue to worsen as long as the Federal Government permits unfair international competition and refuses to implement a strategic industry policy.
A free trade agreement with China would have a drastically negative effect on the clothing and footwear sectors in South Africa - but the overall economic effect would be positive, says one of the first of a series of studies.
South Korea has internationally recognized labor and environmental standards that would ease opposition by US Democrats who traditionally don't favour trade agreements with foreign countries, a South Korean asserted this week.
The United States is the world's largest economy while South Korea ranks tenth. The two countries started negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) in Washington D.C. June 5-10.
Jordan's trade minister yesterday acknowledged that his country had failed to enforce its own labor laws in some instances. Mr. Zu'bi was in Washington to meet with the Bush administration, lawmakers and business groups after a May report by the National Labor Committee said the US-Jordan Free Trade Agreement encouraged sweatshop conditions in Jordanian garment factories.
If commerce minister Kamal Nath's statements in Tokyo are any indication, the proposed trade agreement with Japan will mark a distinct shift from the free-trade agreements India has favoured with other countries.
Tens of thousands of foreign guest workers are stripped of their passports, trapped in involuntary servitude, sewing clothing for Wal-Mart, Gloria Vanderbilt, Target, Kohl's, Thalia Sodi for Kmart, Victoria's Secret, L.L.Bean and others.
The US government is not only a step away from ratifying a new free trade agreement, but also from rewarding persistent and severe human rights abuses in Colombia, where each year more trade union leaders are murdered than in all other nations put together, a new report charges.
The Canadian Auto Workers union will strongly
oppose the proposed free trade agreement between Canada and South Korea in a
presentation this afternoon to the House of Commons Standing Committee on International Trade.
