Global Trade

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a former union leader who never attended college, won a landslide victory today in a Brazilian presidential election that reflected the disenchantment sweeping much of Latin America after a decade of free-market reforms that have failed to deliver promised prosperity. Read More

The external debt of developing countries should not just be cancelled but the debtors compensated, civil society activists told a meeting of international officials, business leaders, scientists and non-governmental organizations members in Prague Saturday. Read More

Three overseas sweatshop lawsuits involving dozens of the United States' largest retailers and a 30,000-member class of garment workers have settled for $20 million. Read More

A primer on the development scheme that would turn southern Mexico and all of Central America into a giant export zone. Read More

A New Yorker looks at the squandered opportunities to make desperately needed changes in the American psyche and global policy following last September 11th. Read More

The timing of the scandals is apt, say some critics from South and South-east Asia, who ended a three-day conference here Monday. The crisis in corporate America comes at a moment when the Anti-Globalization movement in the region is reasserting itself after losing some steam following the September 11th attacks on the United States, they add. Read More

The Methanex Corporation, a Canadian chemical company, stumbled today in its attempt to sue the U.S. government for almost $1 billion over a crucial California clean water law. The Sierra Club welcomes the decision by a tribunal under the North America Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (NAFTA). But we are concerned that the narrow procedural ruling left the door open for future anti-environmental decisions by this tribunal or by NAFTA tribunals in other cases. Read More

WASHINGTON -- U.S. President George W. Bush is on the verge of winning ''fast-track'' authority to negotiate new trade agreements, but at the expense of human rights and environmental protections, say die-hard critics. Read More

This travesty of a vote will be remembered as the Midsummer Nights Massacre, where growing popular concern about corporate-led globalization was shot down in favor of a backwards policy combining corporate managed trade and global deregulation of basic consumer, environmental and other public interest standards. Read More

An overview of the political, environmental and economic context in the 10 years between the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio and the upcoming Summit in Johannesburg. Excerpted from the book ''Earth Summit.biz'' Read More