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The Economic Implications of the Rise of China and India
The economic prowess of China and India, the two drivers of Asia’s current resurgence, is expected to increasingly define global growth prospects for the near and medium term. The implications are of particular concern to neighbouring low-income countries. While recent analytical literature dealing with the economic consequences of the rise of China and India has mainly…
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A Shift in Intellectual Property Policy in US FTAs?
The revised template for US free trade agreements with developing countries contains a number of important changes that respond to concerns expressed by scholars and civil society actors about the expansion of private rights on intellectual property, particularly in the area of public health. Since the conclusion of the Uruguay Round negotiations and the adoption of…
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Uncertainties Loom in EU-ACP Fisheries Trade Relations
Fisheries are an important source of employment, export revenues and food security in many African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, but the renegotiation of their trade relationship with the EU, as well as negotiations at the WTO, pose serious sustainable development challenges. Only 50 percent of the EU’s enormous demand for fish can be supplied from its…
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Higlights of the Draft Modalities for Agriculture
On 17 July, the chair of the Doha Round agriculture negotiations circulated a draft text to the WTO membership aimed at galvanising shifts in countries’ bargaining positions by proposing a “compromise that no Member can quite bring itself to articulate.” The text sets out two potential levels of ambition for reducing WTO Members’ overall trade-distorting support…
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Indicators for Trade and Sustainable Development
The Marrakesh Agreement establishing the World Trading Organisation recognises that trade and economic relations between Members “should be conducted with a view to raising standards of living, ensuring full employment and a large and steadily growing volume of real income and effective demand […] while allowing for the optimal use of the world’s resources in…
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Building Coalitions and Consensus in the WTO
Developing country coalitions have emerged as an integral part of the consensus-building process in the WTO. The implications of this shift for debates on transparency, participation and institutional reform demand greater attention. Concerns about developing country representation have been a long-standing feature of debates about the multilateral trading system. In 1999, the dramatic breakdown of…
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The Rebound of the Mauritian Textiles Industry
Many conjectured that massive disruption of textiles and clothing trade would follow the elimination of quotas in 2005 and that countries such as Mauritius would be among the losers. These predictions have not, overall, proven accurate. Indeed, it is clear that China is not the only winner in the post-quota textiles and clothing trade although, as…
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Developments in US Trade Policy
This fall, the US Congress is expected to start consideration of free trade agreements finalised in June with Peru, Colombia, Panama and South Korea, as well as tackle the new farm bill that has already been approved by the House of Representatives. Changes made to the agreements reflect the new FTA template agreed between the administration…
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WHO Seeks to Strengthen Research on Neglected Diseases
The World Health Organisation has released a revised draft global strategy and plan of action for innovation on diseases that disproportionately affect developing countries. The 41-page document is a conglomeration of ideas, compiled by the WHO Secretariat on the basis of a text developed by the Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) on Public Health, Innovation, and Intellectual…
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Novartis Loses Patent Law Challenge
The Madras High Court has upheld the constitutionality of India’s restrictions on ‘evergreening’ pharmaceutical patents and declined to rule on the provisions’ compliance with WTO rules. In 2006, the Indian Patent Office rejected a patent application for Clivec, a cancer drug manufactured by Swiss-based pharmaceutical giant Novartis, on the grounds that its subject matter was anticipated…
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Biofuels and the Wide World
Many cultures have aphorisms about ethyl alcohol, some extolling its virtues, others warning against its vices. So it seems natural that similarly conflicting views have arisen in debates over ethyl alcohol’s more potent form, fuel ethanol. At a recent ministerial-level International Conference on Biofuels, Peter Mandelson, the EU’s trade commissioner, stated: “Europe should be open to…
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Brazil & US Square Off on Subsidies
Brazil has initiated dispute settlement proceedings against a broad range of US agricultural subsidies, as well as obtained a new, albeit preliminary, victory in the cotton case. According to sources familiar with the ruling, a confidential report on the cotton dispute – handed to the governments of Brazil and the United States on 27 July –…
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Members Still Differ on the Meaning of Balance in NAMA
The draft modalities on non-agricultural market access circulated on 17 July have angered several influential developing countries in the NAMA-11 group, which maintain that the proposed tariff cuts would require greater efforts from developing than developled countries. For the critics, it is all a question of balance. They claim that the text does not respect the…
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Building a Development-friendly World Trading System
Although they are weaker partners in international trade than the major industrial powers, developing countries have an important stake in the multilateral rules-based trading system. The challenge before them is to make it serve their needs better. The process of rule-making in the WTO has been dominated by a handful of industrialised nations that have conventionally…
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And Now for the Real Crunch?
Trade diplomats face yet another ‘crunch time’ in September, when intense negotiations are expected to take place on both agriculture and non-agricultural market access at the WTO. Discussions will be based on the draft modalities for concluding the Doha Round that were released on 17 July by the chairs of the agriculture and industrial tariff negotiations.…
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In Brief
EU-Asia: European and Korean negotiators are scheduled to meet for the third time in September. In July, the EU offered to lift all tariffs on Korean exports provided that Korea makes a ‘similarly ambitious’ offer, which will provide the basis for the September talks. The EU has requested Korea to eliminate import duties on 95…
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Banana Update
The European Union now faces four separate WTO disputes – by Ecuador, Colombia, Panama and the US – on its revised banana import regime. Following the loss of a long-running WTO dispute in 1997, the EU was supposed to eliminate all quotas and establish a single tariff that would apply as of 1 January 2006…
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New Trade Barriers
The past few years have seen a proliferation of a variety of non-tariff barriers (NTBs) in developed countries. In particular, food and environmental safety standards are increasingly threatening a substantial proportion of developing country exports. The WTO agreements on sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS), as well as technical barriers to trade (TBT), aim to ensure that…