Archive - Mar 30, 2007 - Article

The European Union and members of the NAMA-11 coalition - including South Africa, India, Brazil and Egypt - yesterday differed with the United States over the pace and timing of sectoral tariff elimination talks in the Doha Development Agenda nonagricultural market access architecture.

Poor cotton farmers in West Africa are facing new pressures from low commodity prices and from privatization programs being advocated by international donors such as the World Bank, the international aid agency Oxfam warned Thursday.

After years of protracted negotiations among WTO members on having an emergency safeguard mechanism to deal with adverse economic impacts as a result of services liberalization in the WTO, the ASEAN group (excluding Singapore) has tabled a proposal on it.

Twelve influential members of the United States Congress, in a letter to US Trade Representative Susan Schwab, have urged the 'immediate reconsideration' of certain TRIPS plus provisions in US Free Trade Agreements so as to ensure adherence to the World Trade Organization's 2001 Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health.

The Group of 20 (G20) developing countries at the WTO said Thursday that trade-distorting subsidies from the developed countries are at the root of the critical situation of cotton for developing countries, and is one of the major inequalities in international agricultural trade.