Archive

Brazil is more than willing to come forward with an improved offer on reducing tariffs for industrials beyond its 54 percent cut already announced if the European Union improves its stance on agricultural market access and the United States further reduces its own domestic farm supports, said Brasilia's chief trade negotiator in Geneva yesterday.

The third day of the meeting of the WIPO's Provisional Committee on Proposals Related to a Development Agenda (PCDA) discussed proposals of the Africa Group and Colombia.

A link to a technical paper produced by the U.S. and New Zealand on an approach to sensitive agriculture products in the WTO agriculture negotiations.

The Special Session of the Council for Trade in Services, meeting this week for the first time since the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference, has been taking up some organizational matters including on how to proceed with respect to the plurilateral process.

At a meeting on services at the WTO last week, several developing countries have stressed their understanding that participation in the plurilateral mode of negotiations would be on a voluntary and non-compulsory basis.

Six of the leading players in the long-running global trade talks are to meet in London next month for what is being billed as a 'collective striptease' to unblock deadlocked negotiations through a series of mutual concessions.

The Norwegian ministry of foreign affairs announced on Tuesday (21 February) it will bring EU rules to curb salmon trade to the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The process on a Development Agenda for the World Intellectual Property Organisation resumes with a week-long meeting starting 20 February.

The importance of the 'public domain' in knowledge and the need to protect it from the incursion of private rights was a strong theme on the second day of the WIPO meeting on the Development Agenda initiative taking place here this week.

The friends of ambition in Doha market access negotiation for industrial products led by the United States and the European Union on Monday submitted a set of questions to negotiations chair Don Stephenson suggesting how to finalize modalities by the end of April, WTD has learned (WTD, 2/20/06).