Global Trade

Trade ministers gather in Tokyo on Friday for a three-day meeting to try to step up the pace of flagging global trade talks, beset by failed deadlines and a lack of progress. Only 25 of the 145 members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have been invited to send ministers to the February 14-16 "mini-ministerial". Their task: to thrash out ideas for giving a boost to negotiations, mainly on greater market access in services, industrial goods and the traditionally-thorniest subject of agriculture. Read More

The World Trade Organization praised El Salvador Wednesday for taking steps to open up its economy, but ignored a damning report from a global grouping of trade unions that accuses the country of dismissing workers' rights, particularly in export processing zones (EPZs), known locally as 'maquilas.' Read More

The European Union is expected to bow today to political and popular concern about public services, by ruling out talks in the Doha world trade round on further liberalization of its health, education, energy and water markets. Read More

DAVOS, Switzerland -- While participants in the World Economic Forum here debated the consequences of a possible war in Iraq, police officers with tear-gas grenades and water cannons mounted a huge security operation to keep protesters away from the delegates, who included Secretary of State Colin Powell. Read More

(December 10, 2002) -- OXFAM is calling on EU leaders meeting at the EU summit in Copenhagen (December 12 - 13) to scrap the Common Agriculture Policy's export subsidies regime which is having a devastating impact on farmers in the developing world. Read More

"We don't want to be an American colony!" shouted demonstrators who staged massive protests in Quito, Ecuador, on Oct. 31, as the region's trade ministers held their seventh meeting on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Meanwhile, thousands of Brazilians took to the streets of So Paulo to protest the deal, set to take effect in 2005, which would create the world's largest free-trade zone, with a market of 800 million people. Read More

The United States, recently criticised for its protectionist trade policies, on Tuesday proposed removing world tariffs on manufactured goods no later than 2015. Read More

Unicef and McDonald's have agreed ''to team up to raise money on behalf of the world's children.'' This perilous partnership is to be launched on November 20, 2002 -- a day that used to be known in Unicef circles as the anniversary of the 1989 adoption of United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Unicef now calls November 20th ''McDonald's World Children's Day.'' Read More

Two years ago, rioters protesting increased water rates forced a Bechtel, U.S. company, in Bolivia to pack its bags and leave. Now, in a harbinger of the loss of local control through globalization, the corporation is striking back in secret proceedings. Read More

The protests against the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) --and the police violence that rocked Quito during the day yesterday--ended on a positive note for protesters in the evening, putting the Bush Administration's negotiator, Robert Zoellick, in an embarrassing and awkward position. Read More