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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

Where economics meets religious fundamentalism
11-Aug-2006    
Faith-based fundamentalism is not the exclusive domain of terrorists. Some fundamentalists operate in the legitimate, nonviolent world of American politics where they wear suits, appear on television and are venerated as geniuses.
WTO: Best left for dead?
9-Aug-2006     TomPaine.com
Confronting the bilateral FTAs will no doubt present fresh difficulties for activists. After all, bilateral negotiations were advancing with or without the multilateral body.
Putting world trade back together again
9-Aug-2006    
The Irish poet WB Yeats wrote that when things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. The Doha round has finally fallen apart. What, if anything, can hold the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the multilateral trading system together?
Managing Globalization: A new trade bandwagon - Are rich-poor pacts fair?
9-Aug-2006    
You might as well call it Newton's Third Law of Trade Negotiations.
US reviews duty-free access to market
8-Aug-2006     Washington Times
The Bush administration is considering ending trade concessions granted to India, Brazil and other fast-developing nations under a three-decade-old program meant to help poor countries. The administration's review comes as some lawmakers look to punish governments that opposed US policies during World Trade Organization talks -- especially a group of middle-income nations led by Brazil and India -- by ending their preferences entirely.
For George Bush, a fair deal means what American farmers demand
2-Aug-2006    
When the Doha round of global trade talks collapsed last Monday, suddenly and acrimoniously, after five long years, furious trade ministers seemed to agree about only one thing - they were throwing away the best hope in decades of helping poor countries trade their way out of poverty.
WTO is dead, long live free trade: globalisation and its new avatars
1-Aug-2006    
Bilateral and unilateral, initiatives are the new avatars of globalisation and free trade. And it is these avatars we must challenge to stop corporate rule, while WTO hangs between intensive care and the crematorium.
Uncle Sam faces a world trade backlash
31-Jul-2006    
America may blame the rest of the world for the breakdown of the world trade talks, but the rest of the world blames America. In fact, for emerging economies, the collapse is another reason to hate Uncle Sam - a dislike that could have deep ramifications for US Inc.
The legacy of Doha: spaghetti bowl trade
31-Jul-2006    
IN the end Doha died not with a bang but a whimper, with media coverage of its collapse being squeezed off the front pages by the escalating crisis in the Middle East.
Bilateral deals 'mock' Doha
31-Jul-2006    
The Doha round of world trade talks may have collapsed in Geneva last week -- denying the world's developing countries their promised access to global markets -- but leading trade expert Jagdish Bhagwati remains optimistic about the cause of multilateral trade liberalisation.