Archive - Dec 19, 2005

The United States this week succeeded in softening the demands of a draft ministerial declaration with respect to cutting its domestic cotton subsidies after many intense meetings with ministers from five West African countries demanding the elimination of these trade- distorting payments.

After a lot of discussions and generally little sleep for the major players, World Trade Organization trade ministers yesterday crossed a major hurdle and adopted a Hong Kong ministerial declaration that calls for achieving full modalities in the Doha agriculture and market-opening negotiations in industrials by the end of next April

The International League of People's Struggles (LPS) and the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN or the New Patriotic Alliance)