Fair Trade (English)

10.11.2006 Guatemala's Congress did recognize that CAFTA would have negative social effects, but did not specify how. The promise to legislate compensatory measures was an empty gesture to get the measure passed. To date, no studies have been carried out or legislation passed, but Congress continues to comply with Washington's demands.

03.11.2006 Just weeks before the elections, Congress is unable to agree on legislation regarding the nation's 12 million undocumented immigrants. Legislators are at loggerheads over such disparate proposals as conditional legalization, guest-worker programs and massive deportations.

07.10.2006 Despite the difficulties of the U.S. Congress to pass Free Trade Agreements (FTA) due to the November congressional elections, the Bush administration remains firm in its strategy to push them in Latin America.

08.09.2006 Latin American authorities’ failure to label genetically-modified products does not only violate consumers’ rights, but also their freedom to choose.

25.08.2006 The U.S. government's announcement that it will review the possibility of limiting, suspending, or withdrawing trade preferences under the General System of Preferences (GSP) to three Latin American countries—Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela—is political pressure...

03.08.2006 According to various reports, the 14-hour meeting on Sunday 23 July amongst the G6 -- US, EU, Japan, Brazil, India, Australia -- ministers ended in the early hours of the Monday morning. Ministers did not even get around to discussing NAMA.

03.07.2006 This particular criminal organization has already escaped justice for more than a decade. Truth was an early victim and hope is missing, presumed dead. So where does that leave us? We're all witnesses to these crimes.

15.06.2006 In the past few weeks global trade talks have been dealt a series of stunning blows. President Bush appointed his chief trade negotiator, Rob Portman, Budget Director. The move was widely viewed as a shift in the administration’s priorities to focus on internal matters rather than the conclusion of the Doha Round.

23.08.2005 What is the actual "state of play" in Geneva? Civil society groups that regard the coming WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong as condemned to producing a deal that can only be detrimental to the interests of developing countries were cheered by the failure of the recent World Trade Organization (WTO) General Council meeting in late July to arrive at substantive agreements in any of the critical areas of negotiations: agriculture, non-agricultural products, and services.

04.08.2005 At 12:03 am on July 28th, the House of Representatives approved the Central America-Dominican Republic-United States Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA. CAFTA, which would expand NAFTA to Central America and the Dominican Republic, would devastate farmers, privatize essential public services, and accelerate the race to the bottom on wages in the US and all over Central America.

27.07.2005 International agency Oxfam called on US Members of Congress today to reject the Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Central American countries and the Dominican Republic (DR-CAFTA.) Oxfam believes that the agreement, in its current form, will do more harm than good and will endanger the livelihood of many thousands of small farmers who already live in poverty.

18.07.2005 The world of the border turns labor law on its head-old, established legal rights are just so much ink on paper, and even the decision of federal judges to enforce the law are simply ignored. NAFTA's labor and environmental "side-agreements" have provided no help to either labor or the environment.

09.07.2005 More than a year after signing, President Bush finally sent the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) to the U.S. Congress for vote. On June 30, the Senate approved the agreement by a 54-45 vote.

26.05.2005 The Dominican Republic - Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) is a threat to poor people in developing countries, said international agency Oxfam today, as the presidents of five Central American countries and the Dominican Republic are meeting with President Bush. The six presidents have just completed an unprecedented road show to convince US citizens and their lawmakers to support the Free Trade Agreement between their countries and the US, but opposition to the agreement is mounting.

03.12.2004 Control over water is one of the main incentives of the proposal for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The United States and transnational corporations want to use the neoliberal integration of the hemisphere to privatize water resources. They also want to use it to alter the course of water flows with megaprojects that environmentalists deem demented.

27.10.2004 They are a few of the results benefiting Mexico from the cross-border collaboration fostered by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) of North America. The CEC is an international organization created in 1994 through the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC)--a side accord to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

06.10.2004 From September 20th to 24th the negotiators for Mercosul [Mercado Común del Sur] met in Brussels. Among them were the negotiators from Brazil and the European Union to make bids on tariffs and integration processes. The agreements which have been negotiated in the technical and diplomatic commissions now will later be endorsed by a Ministerial meeting, held in Brasilia, from October 20th to 24th.

10.09.2004 On Wednesday 8 September, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is expected to rule that the EU and US are breaking the law by paying their farmers to produce cotton and sugar, which is then dumped on poor countries, undermining poor farmers' livelihoods.

09.08.2004 The European Union is illegally dumping millions of tonnes of subsidised sugar on world markets and destroying poor farmers livelihoods, according to early reports of a ruling released today at the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

29.07.2004 The chances of agreement being reached at this week's talks in Geneva on trade between the world's rich and poor nations are small. Following the failure of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks in Cancun, Mexico, the position of the developing nations appears to have grown stronger. As a result, they're now much less likely to accept proposals put forward by the world's richer nations.