A cargo plane that departed from Chicago arrived at Incheon International Airport at 7:39 a.m. Thursday. The plane was the first vehicle to bring U.S. freight to Korea since the bilateral free trade agreement took effect Thursday.
The latest round of negotiations in the Trans-Pacific Partnership nine-country trade pact has wrapped up without an American offer on access to its prized dairy markets.
The Colombian government filed a bill to hurry through implementation of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States, reported local media Tuesday.
As the South Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) takes effects Thursday, some are expecting new trade pressures from the US, including moves to open the beef market. In particular, South Korea will be forced to sit down at the negotiating table if the US requests negotiations on beef.
Labor has seized on Coalition disunity over foreign investment to warn that a Nationals plan for new restrictions on investment in farmland would breach the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement.
The 11th round of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) talks concluded in Melbourne Friday, with member states suggesting the negotiations had made significant progress but civil society groups reiterating concerns that the United States' corporate demands could undermine social, economic and environmental policies.
"We do know that global corporations are pushing hard for the inclusion of provisions that benefit companies, but not necessarily workers and communities," Gerardine Kearney, President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), told IPS.
Taiwanese officials on Wednesday said they would recommend a conditional lifting of restrictions against U.S. beef that contains a “safe level” of ractopamine, a meat-leanness enhancer used by U.S. cattle raisers, to the legislature.
With just days left before the implementation of the US-Korea free trade agreement Washington is drawing attention to a little publicized area of the trade treaty, the part covering the pricing of medicine in Korea. The US says it wants more transparency; the Korean pharmaceutical industry says it wants to maintain control over pricing domestically.
Local experts in hygiene and veterinary medicine have urged the US to squarely face the challenges posed by the scientific evidence on which it has based its contention that US beef containing the lean meat-enhancing feed additive ractopamine is safe for human consumption, before it presses Taiwan to handle the issue scientifically.