Archive - jun 2, 2009

Your presence and the active participation of the governments that you head in this Conference, which will bring together all of the United Nations members states – the “G192” – are necessary in order to achieve urgent and concrete responses that are in keeping with the seriousness of the global systemic crisis now confronting humanity. A crisis unleashed in the center of the system of economic and political power whose unsustainable and irresponsible model of consumption and production continues to asphixiate the entire planet, deepening day after day the social, climate, food, and energy crises with untold consecuences for billions of people, nature, and indeed life itself.

Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said this Sunday, May 17, at the end of a two-day trip to Saudi Arabia, that he called on king Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud for the two countries to jointly seek reciprocal investment opportunities.

Despite capitalism's recently damaged reputation, participants at the World Economic Forum on the Middle East this weekend agreed that minimal regulation was key to growth.

The historic free-trade negotiations between Canada and the European Union were launched to much fanfare this month, but reaching a deal between the 27-country economic bloc and the provincially dominated federation of Canada will not be a walk in the park.

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk in a series of private and public gatherings this week in Geneva stressed the need for trading partners to consider new ideas to help break the current impasse in the Doha round of global trade talks, but also said the U.S. would look to build on the work done so far rather than scrapping it.

But I am acutely conscious that this focus on the traditional agenda, appropriate though it is, should not obscure the vital need to refresh the mandate of the WTO to deal with tomorrow's problems. Here, the interface between the international trade agenda and the climate change agenda looms larger than any single issue.

United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk met with representatives of key World Trade Organization member countries May 11 for a first round of exchanges on how to get the stalled Doha trade talks back on track and towards a successful conclusion.