Archive - Feb 2007

The current efforts towards a breakthrough in the stalled Doha negotiations at the World Trade Organisation have focused firstly on getting the United States to make a new offer to put a maximum limit on its total 'trade-distorting' domestic support (TDS) in agriculture that is more acceptable than its previously announced offer.

Sitting together in a newly constituted General Council, World Trade Organization members yesterday vowed to conclude the Doha trade negotiations - but continued to differ on how to do so.

The Task Force Food Sovereignty (TFFS), a network of farmer organizations and peasant support NGOs and individuals which campaigns

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.

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.

A number of G33 ministers present at Davos had issued a statement on behalf of the grouping emphasizing that any convergence on Special Products (SPs) and Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) must not 'subvert the development goals and aspirations of the vast bulk of small, poor and vulnerable producers of developing countries.'

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.