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  1. Negotiations

:: Across the board ::


This section contains news and analysis of sweeping developments that affect the overall push and pull towards FTAs and bilateral investment treaties. This means major trends relating to bilateralism, often with global consequences, and other cross-cutting issues. New developments arising from US politics, the WTO or South-South alliance-building, for instance, are often reported here as they tend to have systemic impacts.

last update: May 2012

Why are my highly educated friends so ignorant about trade?
16-Feb-2017     Local Futures Blog
Local Futures' Isabel Marlens discusses why many people know so little about trade issues, and what can be done about it.
These countries could be Trump’s next trade war targets
14-Feb-2017     Bloomberg
India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam have largely escaped U.S. President Donald Trump’s glare on trade, but he may yet come looking. The U.S. runs trade deficits with all of them, in some cases quite big ones.
Trump scraps The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) for bilateral “free trade”
8-Feb-2017     Global Research
Trump wants even stronger, pro-U.S. business free trade deals to the benefit of U.S. multinational corporations and at the expense of the U.S. trading partners.
Trump has one big idea to fix America’s trade deals. It’s not very good.
8-Feb-2017     Slate
If governments turn out to be absolutely desperate to sign FTAs with the US they won't have much choice but to deal with an administration whose motto is “America first”, which may mean learning to love all our genetically modified produce, among other concessions.
Free trade: a corporate scam
7-Feb-2017     Daily Times
"Free trade" rules are written by corporations to enlarge their freedom to commodify and privatise the last inch of land, the last drop of water, the last seed, the last serving of food, the last byte of information, the last bit of data, knowledge and imagination.
One year on from TPPA mass protests – how we can shape trade for the 99% not the 1%
7-Feb-2017     The Daily Blog
The governments and corporate lobbies that champion these deals are in a state of denial and desperately trying to rescue their bankrupt model.
Brian Fallow: The TPP is dead - long live what?
27-Jan-2017     NZ Herald
Does it mark the end of an era, the death of the Washington Consensus about the liberating power of markets, multilateralism and open economies?
Navarro outlines criteria for 'model' trade agreements
26-Jan-2017     Politico
The Trump administration will be pushing for agreements that tighten rules-of-origin requirements, crack down on steel and aluminum dumping and reduce the trade deficit by requiring nations to buy more U.S. products
As TPP crumbles, people must remain vigilant vs equally unfair bilateral deals
26-Jan-2017     People Over Profit
As the United States officially walks away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the people must remain vigilant over possible replacements.
US to pursue bilateral trade with allies around the globe, asserts Trump administration
24-Jan-2017     Financial Express
The new Trump administration has asserted that it would pursue bilateral trade opportunities with allies around the globe as multilateral trade agreements like TPP are not in interest of the country.