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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

Stiglitz: FTAs advantageous to US
30-Aug-2007     The Edge
Nobel laureate and former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz believes that no country should enter into free trade agreements with the US, as none of the developing countries has benefited greatly from them.
Google's free trade agenda
20-Jul-2007     Forbes
For the past several months, Google has been quietly lobbying the US government to include restrictions against Internet censorship as a stipulation in free trade agreements with other countries.
FTA push moves to top of Bush agenda
18-Jul-2007     The Gate
With the president's top domestic priority -- immigration overhaul -- in tatters, the Bush administration is intensifying efforts to move its trade agenda on Capitol Hill, using national security as an argument for four free-trade deals it wants Congress to pass as quickly as possible.
US FTA talks hanging in the balance
2-Jul-2007     The Star
Trading partners of the United States will have less confidence that the United States can honour trade deals it is negotiating after Congress leaders announced that they would not renew the President's fast-track trade authority, and also rejected two FTAs.
House Republicans push for Bush trade renewal
29-Jun-2007    
U.S. House of Representatives Republicans sought a broad renewal on Thursday of the Bush administration's "fast track" trade authority to conclude world trade talks and smaller bilateral deals.
A backroom deal on trade?
26-Jun-2007     Socialist Worker
The crisis facing the US empire in the Middle East is also playing out in American efforts to maintain economic dominance in Asia and Latin America.
USTR, Congress settle on changes to trade deals
26-Jun-2007     ABC News
The Bush administration and U.S. lawmakers have agreed on a blueprint to strengthen labor and environmental protections in four pending free trade deals, trade officials said on Monday.
The changing landscape of regional trade agreements: 2006 update
17-Jun-2007    
An update (to end 2006) of WTO's discussion paper on RTAs/FTAs
'Free trade' drives Mexicans north
24-May-2007     Seattle Post Intelligencer
While Democratic leaders and President Bush do the hard sell on bipartisan immigration reform, they are now pushing secret, anti-worker, anti-environment trade agreements that will only exacerbate US immigration problems.
'New trade policy for America'
11-May-2007     House and Ways Committee
The agreement announced today is a fundamental shift in US trade policy and clears the way for broad, bipartisan congressional support for the Peru and Panama FTAs.