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23-Sep-2008
Scoop
The proposed expansion of the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (NZ, Chile, Brunei, and Singapore, commonly known as the P4 Agreement) to include investment and financial services, and to add the US to its membership, was bad enough. But for this to suddenly morph into a fullblown Free Trade Agreement with the US is catastrophic for any remaining economic sovereignty that New Zealand has.
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23-Sep-2008
AFP
Australia, Peru and Vietnam have expressed interest in joining a budding Asia-Pacific tariff-busting plan which received a boost on Monday with the participation of the United States, officials said.
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23-Sep-2008
Dairy Herd Management
The US National Milk Producers Federation said today it would seek the full exclusion of New Zealand’s dairy products under the newly-announced Transpacific free trade agreement. This stance is because of the New Zealand dairy industry’s unique structure and excessive manipulation of dairy markets globally and in the US.
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23-Sep-2008
Stuff
The New Zealand National Party’s trade spokesman Tim Groser believes the dairy sector is likely to emerge as the big winner from the United States’ decision to negotiate a free trade pact with New Zealand and three other countries because the deal could break down strict tariff barriers for dairy products entering the US. He also predicts Australia will want to get involved in the deal.
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22-Sep-2008
The Nation
The heated debates in the Caribbean surrounding this region’s involvement in an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Europe and the upcoming sixth summit of the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries in Ghana where similar issues will be debated, brings to memory the words of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie who saw a long time ago the danger the European union — then the European Common Market — would pose for Africa.
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22-Sep-2008
Solomon Star
Pacific Island countries, including Solomon Islands, have told the European Union they remain committed to concluding a comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement by year’s end. And because not all of them will sign up to the ‘trade in goods’ part, they want to focus on issues where agreement can be easiest reached.
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22-Sep-2008
Scoop
The New Zealand Alliance Party says a proposed new free trade deal with the USA is a race to the bottom that will be great for big business and terrible for workers. The party’s trade spokesperson Victor Billot says any free trade deal is coming at a strange time as the global financial system teeters on the edge of collapse and Fonterra’s venture into China has ended in disaster.
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22-Sep-2008
The Age
The United States has agreed to join Singapore, New Zealand, Chile and Brunei in a free trade agreement which could set the pace for a broader Asia-Pacific free trade area, officials said.
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22-Sep-2008
Yonhap
"The aim of the talks will be to ensure the greatest possible protection for sensitive items, so that if a CEPA pact is signed, the fallout for local farmers can be minimized," a Korean ministry official said. He added that talks are entering the home stretch.
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22-Sep-2008
The Assistant Minister in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Duke Lefhoko, has urged manufacturers to widen their marketing scope beyond the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), given the impending new trade arrangements that Botswana is negotiating with other countries.
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22-Sep-2008
After clinching a deal for an FTA with ASEAN, India will move fast to complete negotiations in the next few months for pacts with Japan and South Korea that will open trade in goods as also services for Indian firms.
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21-Sep-2008
Talks on a free trade agreement (FTA) between the six-nation Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) and India have made substantial progress with the two sides committing to conclude the deal as early as possible.
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21-Sep-2008
NACLA
Since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993, the US Congress has debated and passed several new bilateral trade agreements with Peru, Jordan and Chile, as well as the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Congressional debates over immigration policy have proceeded as though those trade agreements bore no relationship to the waves of displaced people migrating to the United States, looking for work.
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21-Sep-2008
The Punch
The Nigerian Labour Congress and the Liberia Labour Congress have joined their voices in the clamour for West African governments not to sign the Economic partnership Agreements, as proposed by the European Union.
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21-Sep-2008
World Bulletin
Turkey expressed its views to sign free trade agreement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member countries, indicating that serious initiatives may be launched within the scope of Asia-Pacific strategies.
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21-Sep-2008
Epoch Times
Canada is moving toward a far-reaching free trade agreement with the European Union that advocates say will end a long-standing dependency on the US market.
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21-Sep-2008
FT
In May 2004, when government officials from the US, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala gathered in Washington to sign a 2,400-page trade agreement, there was a sense of achievement in the air. Four years later, that early enthusiasm and optimism has come down several notches.
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21-Sep-2008
Colombia Reports
Coal mines in Colombia may not become the gold mines they could have been for Caterpillar Inc should a stalled US-Colombia free trade agreement fail to progress through Congress.
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21-Sep-2008
FPIF
The only way the Colombian deal will remain the first accord of its kind defeated in Washington, it’s clear, is if organized labor continues to play the central role in establishing the terms of debate around basic human rights and keeping Democratic members of Congress in line.
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20-Sep-2008
CBC
The President of the National Union of Public Workers says the Barbados trade union movement missed a golden opportunity to make its views known on the proposed economic partnership agreement between Caricom and the European Union.
