Archive

As Malaysia and the United States began their first round of talks on a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA), they were confronted by a group of Malaysian protesters concerned that the agreement will cause the country more harm than good.

Bilateral free trade agreements are seen by the agricultural biotechnology industry as an important conduit for spreading genetically modified organisms (GMOs) around the world.

A new economic simulation of the U.S. agriculture proposal at the World Trade Organization (WTO) confirmed what NGOs and developing countries have been saying for months: the proposal has so many loopholes it may actually increase the allowable amount of domestic agriculture spending in the U.S. The new simulation exposed not only the emptiness of the U.S. proposal, but also the limited space that U.S. negotiators find themselves in as the Doha Round moves forward.

WTO members have clashed (mainly along the lines of developed and developing countries) over the interpretation of a paper by the WTO Secretariat providing data on the effects of applying different coefficients and two types of flexibilities in formulae for reducing tariffs in non-agricultural market access (NAMA).

A long-standing fight by several developing countries to amend the WTO's TRIPS Agreement to oblige members to get patent applicants to disclose the source of origin of biological resources and associated traditional knowledge took a step forward this week when six countries proposed the text of new provisions to be added to the TRIPS Agreement.

The WTO Negotiating Group on Market Access for Non-Agricultural Products (NAMA), at an informal consultation Wednesday (31 May), discussed proposals dealing with non-tariff barriers (NTBs).

Links to three new submission in relation to agriculture market access.

It's the 'Come to Jesus' moment for the Doha round of multilateral trade negotiations. 'We are now in the red zone,' World Trade Organization Director General Pascal Lamy said recently. 'And we are not far from the red part of this red zone. The timetable is a number of days, not weeks.'

There has been no progress made in the negotiations this week on non-agriculture market access (NAMA) in the WTO on the so-called 'exception' issues, according to Ambassador Don Stephenson of Canada, Chair of the NAMA Negotiating Group.

The United States yesterday sharply opposed the idea of commencing text-based negotiations on disclosing the origin of biological resources and 'traditional knowledge' in patent applications (WTD, 5/26/06).