Archive - 2007

The WTO Negotiating Group on Market Access for Non-agricultural Products (NAMA) concluded on Thursday 25 January four days of consultations in different formats to advance the technical work in the negotiations. The consultations to advance technical work covered areas such as Ad Valorem Equivalents, Non-Tariff Barriers, Recently Acceded Members and sectorals.

As Malaysia and the US engaged in another round of bilateral talks to finalise a free trade agreement (FTA), a group of citizens staged a peaceful protest outside the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

The Group of 20 developing country alliance has criticized the Bush administration's proposal for reforming U.S. farm subsidy programs, arguing that the changes would not lead to any real cuts in actual spending.

Globalization, not global warming, is the bigger threat to the country

Full resumption of negotiations (under the Doha work programme) in all negotiating groups was announced Wednesday (31 January) at an informal heads-of-delegation meeting at the WTO by Mr. Pascal Lamy, Director-General and chair of its Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC).

Coming from the mini-ministerial meeting at Davos, the US Trade Representative, Ms. Susan Schwab, told reporters at a media briefing that there was palpable optimism and a sense of urgency to have a breakthrough in the negotiations.

Consistent with the game being played by developed countries, the US has begun the process of shifting its subsidies under Amber and Blue boxes to Green box through its 2007 Farm Bill proposals.

World Trade Organization Director General Pascal Lamy yesterday called on members to resume the suspended Doha Development Agenda trade negotiations fully across the whole spectrum by combining both the multilateral process as well as discreet and bilateral meetings among key players.

The chair of the Doha Development Agenda negotiations on nonagricultural market access Don Stephenson has created what he calls a NAMA caucus of some two dozen key World Trade Organization members to accelerate work on all core issues.

Enough with the grandstanding: let's get down to the numbers. That was the attitude struck by trade ministers who last weekend pulled the so-called 'Doha round' of trade talks out of semi-retirement for one last shot at the world title.