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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

Trade pacts set for heated fight
4-Oct-2011     WSJ
The AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor federation, opposes all three agreements and will hold a Capitol Hill demonstration Tuesday to protest them. But the short timeline mapped out for passage gives opponents little time to block the deals.
Obama sends Korea, Colombia, Panama Trade pacts to Congress, ending wait
4-Oct-2011     Bloomberg
President Barack Obama sent Congress legislation for free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, ending a wait for business supporters that spanned more than four years and two presidencies.
"Trade deals hurt the middle class"
3-Oct-2011     Politico
"We strongly oppose the proposed trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. They will not help put Americans back to work, only further hasten the decline of our middle class," declares Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO
Obama urged to seek power for free-trade deals by ally Daschle
19-Sep-2011     Bloomberg
President Barack Obama should seek more power from Congress to negotiate free-trade agreements, according to a panel that included former Senator Tom Daschle, an adviser to Obama’s 2008 campaign.
A critical look at pending free trade agreements
9-Sep-2011     WBEZ
We sift through the facts and myths of free trade agreements with Laura Carlsen, director of the Americas Program of the Center for International Policy and a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus.
Africa still the odd one out
8-Sep-2011     IPS
While globally trade agreements are more and more about linking production chains between countries and continents, Africa remains locked in a struggle to overcome the colonial legacy of fragmentation, trade experts say.
Some see trade deals as threatening state laws
22-Aug-2011     AP
In Vermont, Maine and other states, there's growing concern that free trade agreements could undermine states' authority in a host of areas, ranging from the regulation of groundwater extraction by bottled water companies, to negotiating lower prices for prescription drugs, to issuance of state approval for a takeover of an electric utility by a foreign-owned company.
US may ratchet up FTA drive amid economic woes: experts
10-Aug-2011     Yonhap
"The US has no viable options at the moment to prevent a further slowdown in the economy," said Kim Han-seong, a researcher at the state-run Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP). "The only answer is free trade deals, and the US is now forced to seek free trade deals aggressively."
Free trade agreements: The dangerous new frontier
5-Aug-2011     People's Democracy
FTAs are worse than the WTO because they demand much more, writes Amit Sengupta
US Senators reach compromise on free trade deals
4-Aug-2011     VoA
US Senate leaders have reached a potential bipartisan compromise on three long-delayed free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea.