The European Union is pressing the United States to lift its longstanding ban on crude oil exports through a sweeping trade and investment deal, according to a secret document from the negotiations obtained by The Washington Post. [...]
Devinder Sharma, NEW DELHI, Nov 28 2013 : "India, a country which lived in the shadows of a ship-to-mouth existence when food would go directly from the ship to hungry mouths has over the years emerged self-sufficient in food production. This historic turnaround was possible only because India had adopted the two planks of what I call a remarkable famine-avoidance strategy: providing farmers with an assured price support for their produce, and introducing a food procurement system that provided for a guaranteed market and at the same time helped get food to the poor in the deficit regions through a network of ration shops. Withdrawing the price support for farmers or freezing it at the de-minimis level of 10 percent as applicable under the Agreement on Agriculture will make farmers vulnerable to the vagaries of the market."
Global Trends by Martin Khor Monday 2 December 2013 WTO food fight in Bali? Will developing countries be allowed to promote food security schemes that buy food from small farmers and also help poor consumers? This is one the issues at the WTO’s Ministerial Conference next week.
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) has obtained from Wikileaks a complete copy of the consolidated negotiating text for the IP Chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). (Copy here, and on the Wikileaks site here: https://wikileaks.org/tpp/) The leaked text was distributed among the Chief Negotiators by the USTR after the 19th Round of Negotiations at Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, in August 27th, 2013.
Vijay Prasad: " countries like Brazil, India, China, these countries are fighting to bring their own brands to market, to bring their own designs to market, and they are being held back by a global or international intellectual property regime that prevents many of them from pushing their brands forward. I mean, one of the real tricks in the 1980s that they are most upset by was the shift in intellectual property from where you copyright not the process by which you get to, say, a sneaker but the actual sneaker itself. "
Greg Palast intervjews Lamy and Martin Khor in Geneva. "GREG PALAST: But we got our hands on a document you certainly won’t find on the WTO website; something very confidential: a secret demand of the European Union and USA, leaning on emerging nations to
Im Schatten von Ceta und TTIP: Das weltweite Dienstleistungsabkommen Tisa ist weitgehend unbekannt. Gegner fürchten, EU-Löhne könnten gedrückt, riskante Finanzprodukte zugelassen oder Datenschutz ausgehebelt werden.
That the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been in the grip of a systemic crisis since 2008 is well known. Notwithstanding relatively minor successes at the Bali Ministerial in December 2013, the WTO's negotiating function remains effectively stalled. The Nairobi Ministerial, set to take place in December 2015, is not likely to yield systemic solutions, notably to break the Doha Round impasse. The longer this negotiating stalemate endures, the more the WTO's foundations will crumble, particularly the much-prized jewel in its crown: the Dispute Settlement System.
Im Dezember bekommt China den Status einer Marktwirtschaft. Die EU hat nun einen Weg gefunden, wie sie sich notfalls trotzdem vor Billigeinfuhren schützen kann.
After decades of steadily increasing globalisation, trade liberalisation has slowed to a standstill. In the United States, Congress has delayed ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) indefinitely. And negotiations around the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have ground to a halt.