Archive - Jul 2006

Global commerce talks at the World Trade Organization collapsed Monday as top powers failed to agree on steps toward liberalizing trade in farm and manufactured goods.

Press Availability with Ambassador Susan C. Schwab, USTR and Mike Johanns, Secretary of Agriculture

The suspension of WTO negotiations is good news for consumers, farmers and fisherfolk around the world, said consumer group Food & Water Watch. The deadlock provides an opportunity for governments to take a new approach when writing the laws that govern global trade.

No one who was not there seems to know what actually happened at the G8 Summit leaders' meeting with the leaders of five developing countries in the lunchtime "outreach working lunch" at St Petersburg on Monday (17 July).

"Flexibilities" was the new key theme and indeed the key word after a short meeting of the G6 Ministers held at the WTO on Monday (17 July) night, to follow up on the lunch meeting at St Petersburg a few hours earlier that the G8 leaders had with the leaders of five developing countries.

Fresh from his discussions at the G8 Summit in St. Petersburg, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh provided a cautiously optimistic insight into the prospects of the deadlocked WTO negotiations.

World leaders

Trade ministers from the U.S. and five other World Trade Organization members have agreed at a meeting today (July 17) to gather again twice this month in Geneva in an effort to push the struggling WTO talks forward.

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) is to stage countrywide general strikes in August to halt removal of industrial tariffs which are expected to open up markets and destroy more jobs and industries.

Leaders of the major world powers face a packed agenda including trade talks and a possible statement on world oil prices on Monday, the last day of a G8 summit overshadowed by violence in the Middle East.