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“Our goal is to be the most economically free entity on Earth.” The Honduran government has agreed to allow an American investment group build a private city, with its own laws, government, and taxation structure, from scratch. While some laud the project as a "beacon of job creation and investment," others decry it as an assault on human rights and democracy. One murder has already been attributed to the political tensions related to the plans for the private city.
posted by Rykey on Sep 24, 2012 - 165 comments

Australia hosts secret trade agreement negotiations this week in Melbourne This Thursday, behind closed doors in Melbourne, representatives from nine countries will take up discussions once again on an ambitious, comprehensive trade agreement for the Asia-Pacific region. Negotiators from Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Vietnam, Malaysia, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Peru and Singapore will pore over draft treaty text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, an agreement to cover all aspects of commercial relations between the countries, from competition and customs to e-commerce, rules of origin and labor, from textiles and apparel to telecommunications and intellectual property. The intellectual property chapter for the TPP will lay out lengthy, highly detailed, coverage of all aspects of IP enforcement and protection between the nine countries.
posted by wilful on Feb 28, 2012 - 11 comments

This past March, former US President Bill Clinton acknowledged to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that tariff policies his administration championed in the mid-1990's helped destroy Haiti's rice production and contributed to the impoverished nation's inability to feed itself. But while most of the world has stopped paying attention to Haiti's woes, Mr. Clinton has become the de facto leader of the effort to rebuild it after the catastrophic earthquake this past January. Will his influence be enough? Reports from the UN Office of the Special Envoy to Haiti indicate that the reconstruction progress has been slow. [more inside]
posted by zarq on Jul 21, 2010 - 35 comments

First hundreds of pets were killed by the poisonous food additive, melamine, from China. Then it turns out that this poison got into the human food chain leading to humans. Then there was the flap about cough syrup killing thousands of people. Then, there was that warning a couple days ago about imported monkfish actually being deadly puffer fish. And now the FDA has issued warnings that toothpaste imported from China has ethylene glycol in it. Yes, the same ethylene glycol that keeps your engine running in the winter. China responds to the warnings by saying "Hey, we printed the ingredients on most of the labels, it's not our fault if antifreeze kills you."
posted by dejah420 on Jun 4, 2007 - 73 comments

"The church of global free trade, which rules American politics with infallible pretensions, may have finally met its Martin Luther." A thorough summary in The Nation of the brilliant but ignored Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests by Ralph Gomory, former IBM Senior Vice President for Science and winner of the National Medal of Science. His heresy? Arguing, with supporting technical and economic data, that multinational corporations and their home countries have divergent interests in shipping skilled labor and advanced technologies overseas, and that this "divergence" is a net negative for the American economy and the American public. Globalization, he argues, has its losers, the United States paramount among them.
posted by Pastabagel on Apr 20, 2007 - 76 comments

The New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark is in Washington DC at the moment and met President George W. Bush formally for the second time this morning (NZST). Although New Zealand is no longer an ally of the US we are apparently very, very, very good friends – but there is only talk about a free trade agreement between us (unlike some).
posted by Samuel Farrow on Mar 21, 2007 - 24 comments

A slush fund for Bush, courtesy of Canada? The proposed softwood lumber deal, which would end the longstanding dispute over Canadian exports to the US, is being criticised for giving the White House $450 million, to be spent without congressional oversight.
posted by [expletive deleted] on Aug 31, 2006 - 36 comments

The recent Australia/US free trade deal ,among many other things, extended copyright from fifty years after an authors death to seventy years. As a result stuff like this happening. via Making Light
posted by thatwhichfalls on Aug 5, 2004 - 12 comments

Enslaved by free trade. The founding myth of the dominant nations is that they achieved their industrial and technological superiority through free trade. Nations that are poor today are told that if they want to follow our path to riches they must open their economies to foreign competition. They are being conned.
posted by badstone on Jun 24, 2003 - 31 comments

Despite efforts to save it, the last major U.S. shirt manufacturing plant has closed. The Hathaway factory had been around since 1853 and had once produced shirts for the Union Army in the Civil War. Most of the 235 women let go had spent more than a decade working there. Cutting fabric and stitching garments was their marketable skill. Retraining isn't an option because these workers will have to find immediate employment. And if this hard reality isn't enough, to be eligible for severance pay, each worker must sign an nondisparagement agreement and promise not to hold Hathaway responsible for liabilities or damages. Why does free trade have to work this way?
posted by ed on Oct 22, 2002 - 47 comments

What the anti-globalists and the dogmatic left share above all with their newfound fellow-travellers among the Islamic fundamentalists is a loss of faith in the modern age and in Enlightenment ideas. The spirit of their protests was captured by a banner at a recent rally in Berlin: "Civilisation is genocide".
posted by semmi on Jun 23, 2002 - 21 comments

"Trade with x only benefits the repressive government of x; it does not get into the hands of the people." How does the White House policy towards x make sense in light of Bush's statement that "Free trade supports and sustains freedom in all its forms. When we open trade, we open minds. We trade with x because trade is good policy for our economy, because trade is good policy for democracy"? Well that's because the first x refers to Cuba and the second x is for China. How's that economic engagement working out with China? Why don't we ask the Tibetans, Falun Gong or the Uighurs? Which foreign policy is the right way to go? Economic isolation or engagement?
posted by buddha9090 on May 16, 2002 - 17 comments

Australia and Europe incensed over U.S. lies on free trade Bush: "The final provisions of the farm Bill are also consistent with America's international trade obligations, which will strengthen our ability to open foreign markets for American farm products". In other words, free trade good when we sell to you, bad when you sell to us.
posted by magullo on May 3, 2002 - 10 comments

Think you know your coffee? I got here because I was arguing over the acidity of coffee with a friend. It's good for knowledge of all things coffee - take a pictorial tour of coffee production, learn how flavors are evaluated, consider some of the political aspects of coffee, watch the techniques of latte art. Coffee, Coffee, Coffee!
posted by meep on Apr 16, 2002 - 27 comments

So the rich get richer? Or just another bleeding heart. EU and US selling poor down the river
Oxfam report accuses west of double standards on trade
The European Union and the United States are robbing the world's poor of billions of dollars each year in export earnings by preaching free trade while protecting their own markets, development campaigners claim today.
posted by onegoodmove on Apr 11, 2002 - 16 comments

Canadian lumber industry lashes out at new U.S. tariff The Canadian lumber industry expressed its frustration and disapproval Wednesday at a U.S. announcement to impose an extra anti-dumping duty of 12.57 per cent on Canadian softwood lumber exports. Once again "free-trade" screws Canadians
posted by scotty on Nov 1, 2001 - 9 comments

It's about time. "Canada and the 33 other governments negotiating the proposed hemispheric free-trade pact finally released a draft version of the deal on Tuesday, almost three months after they made a promise to do so... At a trade ministers' meeting in Buenos Aires the first week of April, Canada pushed for the release of the document, which contains many bracketed sections, or areas on which there is no agreement."
posted by tranquileye on Jul 3, 2001 - 1 comment

Is violence necessary to fight The Man? Hey, ya can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. This essay makes some compelling points on the violence in Seattle and at the FTAA protests.
posted by snakey on Apr 30, 2001 - 21 comments

Salon is running a great article about the AOL/TimeWarner merger that brings up plenty of issues we should all be concerned about. I can't remember the last time a company merger affected so many. This deal touches everyone, from what my grandparents watch on TV at night to what I'll be allowed to see on my RoadRunner cable modem. Just thinking of how they're going to control TV, movies, music, news, and the internet sends chills up and down my spine.
posted by mathowie on Jan 10, 2000 - 0 comments