Trade

US ‘Exports Obesity’

June 21, 2023 Timothy A. Wise, Consortium News. Educate! Food and Agriculture, GMOs, health, Mexico, Trade, US Imperialism

The U.S. government has escalated its conflict with Mexico over that country’s restrictions on genetically modified corn, initiating the formal dispute-resolution process under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. It is only the latest in a decades-long U.S. assault on Mexico’s food sovereignty using the blunt instrument of a trade agreement that has inundated Mexico with cheap corn, wheat, and other staples, undermining Mexico’s ability to produce its own food. With the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador showing no signs of backing down, the conflict may well test the extent to which a major exporter can use a trade agreement to force a sovereign nation to abandon measures it deems necessary to protect public health and the environment.

The Country Is Not For Sale

May 12, 2023 Teri Mattson, WtF is Going on in Latin America and the Caribbean. Podcast – WTF is Going on in Latin America & the Caribbean Corporatism, Honduras, ISDS, Trade, ZEDES

On May 3, Democratic U.S. lawmakers urged the U.S. Trade Representative and State Department to eliminate investor-state dispute settlement provisions from current and future trade deals and to intervene on behalf of Honduras against a U.S. company's nearly $11 billion claim against the country. In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Trade Representative Katherine Tai, 33 lawmakers said that investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) systems in trade deals constitute a "problematic corporate handout" that violates countries' sovereignty and democratic rights. ISDS mechanisms enable multinational corporations to sue the governments of foreign trading partners for profits they claim have been forfeited as a result of domestic policies designed to protect workers, consumers, and ecosystems.

Lula And Xi Jinping Sign 15 Partnership Agreements In Beijiing

April 16, 2023 Kawsachun News. Educate! Brazil, China, Lula da Silva, Trade

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed, this Friday (14th), in Beijing, 15 trade and partnership agreements. Lula was received at the Great Hall of the People, seat of the Chinese government. The leaders participated in an expanded meeting with ministers and advisors from both countries and had a private meeting. In this conversation, in addition to bilateral issues, they discussed dialogue and negotiation to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A dinner in honor of Lula was also hosted by Xi Jinping. The terms signed between the two countries include space cooperation agreements, research and innovation, digital economy and fight against hunger, exchange of communication content between the two countries and trade facilitation.

Labor And Civil Society Groups Outline Shared Priorities For IPEF

March 2, 2023 Arthur Stamoulis, Citizens Trade Campaign. Create! Indonesia, IPEF, Joe Biden, Trade, Washington D.C., Worker Rights and Jobs

Washington, D.C. — Over 400 labor and civil society organizations outlined shared priorities for the pending Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) trade agreement in a letter sent to President Biden. The letter comes shortly before the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is expected to introduce U.S. proposals for IPEF’s labor, environment and digital trade chapters during a key negotiating round being held later this month in Bali, Indonesia. “A wide range of organizations across the United States are ready to fight for an Indo-Pacific trade deal that furthers the President’s vision of creating a new model for trade and international cooperation that prioritizes working people, combats global climate change and reins in Big Tech abuses,” said Arthur Stamoulis.

Nothing Good Will Come From The New Cold War For Australia

December 9, 2022 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Australia, China, New Cold War, Trade

On 15 November 2022, during the G20 summit in Bali (Indonesia), Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told journalists that his country ‘seeks a stable relationship with China’. This is because, as Albanese pointed out, China is ‘Australia’s largest trading partner. They are worth more than Japan, the United States, and the Republic of Korea… combined’. Since 2009, China has also been Australia’s largest destination for exports as well as the largest single source of Australia’s imports. For the past six years, China has largely ignored Australia’s requests for meetings due to the latter’s close military alignment with the US. Now, in Bali, China’s President Xi Jinping made it clear that the Chinese-Australian relationship is one to be ‘cherished’. When Albanese was asked if Xi raised the issue of Australia’s participation in several military pacts against China, he said that issues of strategic rivalry ‘[were] not raised, except for in general comments’.

Global Climate Talks Spark Action Against Investment Treaties

November 18, 2022 Manuel Pérez-Rocha, Inequality.org. Resist! climate crisis, Corporatism, Fossil Fuels, Trade

In advance of the global climate negotiations taking place in Egypt, several countries announced important actions to curb the power of the fossil fuel industry. For decades now, a global web of international investment agreements has given corporations excessive powers to block government policies they don’t like. Through “investor-state dispute settlement” mechanisms, these agreements grant corporations the right to sue governments in unaccountable supranational tribunals, demanding huge payouts in retaliation for actions that might reduce the value of their investments. Corporations are able to file such lawsuits over a wide array of government actions — including actions designed to protect people and the planet.

Labor, Groups Demand Transparency In Indo-Pacific Trade Negotiations

September 9, 2022 Trade Justice Education Fund. Resist! California, Indonesia, Trade, Worker Rights and Jobs

Los Angeles, California - As trade ministers from fourteen countries meet in Los Angeles today for behind-closed-door negotiations on the new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) trade agreement, labor and other civil society organizations rallied outside urging that proposals for the pact be released for public scrutiny and that the deal not be rigged in favor of Big Tech monopolies and other corporate interests. “Our message today is very simple: the public deserves the right to know what IPEF negotiators are proposing in our names,” said Will Jamil Wiltschko, director of the California Trade Justice Coalition, which helped organize the demonstration.

China Forgives 23 Loans For 17 African Countries

August 21, 2022 Ben Norton, Multipolarista. Educate! Africa, China, Infrastructure, Trade

The Chinese government has announced that it is forgiving 23 interest-free loans for 17 African nations, while pledging to deepen its collaboration with the continent. This is in addition to China’s cancellation of more than $3.4 billion in debt and restructuring of around $15 billion of debt in Africa between 2000 and 2019. While Beijing has a repeated history of forgiving loans like this, Western governments have made baseless, politically motivated accusations that China uses “debt-trap diplomacy” in the Global South. The United States has turned Africa into a battleground in its new cold war on China and Russia. And Washington has weaponized dubious claims of Chinese “debt traps” to try to demonize Beijing for its substantial infrastructure projects on the continent. For its part, China has pushed back against the US new cold war.

Automation And The Trade Deficit Are Decimating US Ports

August 11, 2022 Michael Sainato, The Real News Network. Educate! Automation, Ports, Trade, Worker Rights and Jobs

Growing up in San Pedro Bay near Los Angeles, California, Sal DiCostanzo, an executive board member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 13 and a dock worker for over 20 years, has seen jobs in numerous industries at the ports disappear, many of which were exported. “The last remaining jobs that are here that are good paying union jobs with benefits are longshore and other related supply chain jobs,” said DiCostanzo. “Automating these jobs would be taking away the only jobs left for this community.” DiCostanzo also pushed back on proponents of automation using clean technology as an incentive to do so, saying manual equipment that is electric can be introduced as well, and that environmental justice can’t be achieved at the expense of economic justice.

100 Groups Call For Transparent Negotiations On Trade Deal

July 26, 2022 Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams. Resist! Biden administration, Indo-Pacific, TPP, Trade, Transparency

Ahead of next week's key meeting between the United States and 13 Asian and Australiasian nations, more than 100 civil society groups told the Biden administration on Friday that transparent negotiations and increased public input are necessary to prevent an embryonic trade deal from being perceived as the latest iteration of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. "We share your goal of creating a new model for U.S. trade policy that prioritizes the interests of working people, communities of color, the environment, consumers, and family farmers instead of just big corporations," the coalition wrote in a letter to President Joe Biden. "The launch of your administration's Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) may be a test case for what this model looks like and what it can achieve."

Reject CPTPP, Stay Out Of New Cold War

July 20, 2022 Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury, Inter Press Service News Agency. Educate! China, New Cold War, Trade, Trans Pacific Partnership

’US President Barack Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’ after his 2012 re-election sought to check China’s sustained economic growth and technological progress. Its economic centerpiece was the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). But the US International Trade Commission (ITC) doubted the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) and other exaggerated claims of significant TPP economic benefits in mid-2016, well before US President Donald Trump’s election. The ITC report found projected TPP growth gains to be paltry over the long-term. Its finding was in line with the earlier 2014 findings of the Economic Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture. Meanwhile, many US manufacturing jobs have been lost to corporations automating and relocating abroad.

This New Import Law Will Hurt US Consumers

June 23, 2022 Moon of Alabama. Educate! China, Congress, Global Economy, New Cold War, Trade, Uyghurs

The Chinese government had launched a large scale program to solve the problem once and for all. It subsidized companies to move production facilities to Xinjiang. For geographic reasons these are now mostly in the northern part of Xinjiang. The government also organized large camps for vocational and language training. After people went through those they were offered jobs in the new factories where they work in exchange for normal wages. The U.S. anti-China propaganda campaign claims that these Uighur people were forced to take up their new jobs and calls that 'forced labor'. It is not. Working in some industry far from home is normal in China. It is the reason why each year during the Spring Festival season 300 million people in China travel to reunite with their families. Real forced labor is what one sees in the U.S. prison industry where prisoner have no choice but to work for a few pennies which the prison will in the end regain due to absurd prices for small necessities prisoners have to pay for.

Europe: The Subordinate Ally Of The United States

October 31, 2021 Vijay Prashad, People's Democracy. Educate! China, Europe, Trade, US Imperialism

In recent months, European countries and the European Union have been put under pressure from the United States to substantially break ties with the People’s Republic of China as well as to orient Europe’s military towards confrontation with China. The pressure campaign – which began with US President Donald Trump and continues with his successor Joe Biden – goes against the obvious interests of most European countries. China, not the United States, is Germany’s largest trading partner and has been so for the past five years; Germany, the economic dynamo of Europe, would suffer if it attempts to cut commercial ties with China. China is the European Union’s second biggest trading partner (behind the United States) and the European Union is one of China’s biggest trading partners.

Final Declaration Of ALBA-TCP’s 19th Summit

June 26, 2021 Alba Ciudad, Orinoco Tribune. Create! COVID-19, Latin America, Trade, US Sanctions

The Heads of State and Government and the heads of delegations of the member countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Peoples’ Trade Treaty, meeting in person on June 24, 2021, within the framework of the commemoration of the bicentennial of the Battle of Carabobo in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, by signing this declaration, renew our commitment to strengthening the integration and unity of our peoples as the founding ideology of Commanders Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro Ruz; we vindicate the ideology of Bolívar, Martí, San Martín, Sucre, O’Higgins, Pétion, Morazán, Sandino, Túpac Katari, Bartolina Sisa and other heroes of Latin American and Caribbean independence, symbols of historical and cultural union of the struggle of our Indigenous peoples...

Guatemala: Address Policies That Put Corporations Over People

June 12, 2021 Jen Moore and Ellen Moore, Inequality.org. Educate! Guatemala, Indigenous Rights, Kamala Harris, Trade

Vice President Kamala Harris is traveling to Guatemala this week to discuss solutions to the poverty, violence, and corruption that are among the driving forces of migration. Contributing to these drivers are neoliberal arrangements, such as the Central America–Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), which have been imposed on Guatemalans. This framework favors the development of large-scale mining and energy projects that are devastating to the well-being of rural communities and Indigenous peoples, while allowing private corporations to sue governments over hard-fought social and environmental protections. Case in point: A Nevada-based mining company is suing the Guatemalan government for over $400 million, claiming violations of investor protections in the CAFTA.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources