The Council of Canadians is pleased that the Canada-EU trade deal, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), has seen the light of day after German television show Tagesschau provided the full text online this afternoon [...]
On December 3, trade ministers from members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) will begin three days of meetings in Bali, Indonesia. Trade Facilitation, estimated to add $1 trillion to global income, features prominently in the negotiation agenda. However, official estimates depend on too many unjustifiable assumptions. Inaccuracy accumulates in several stages of the estimation process: in estimating the gains from trade facilitation for a sample of countries, in scaling up the gains to the global level and in estimating employment gains. This brief describes the estimation procedure and shows that the resulting figures are too uncertain to underpin any policy decisions.
With much fanfare, Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada announced that trade negotiators have concluded negotiations on the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), even organizing a signing ceremony with the provinces on September 26 to “finalize” the deal.
Nine months after reaching an agreement in principle on the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the European Union, government of Canada officials announced the end of technical negotiations on Tuesday afternoon.
The European Union is pressing the United States to lift its longstanding ban on crude oil exports through a sweeping trade and investment deal, according to a secret document from the negotiations obtained by The Washington Post. [...]
In the face of fierce opposition to its plan to enshrine far-reaching rights for foreign investors in the EU-US trade deal, the Commission is trying to appease the critics with a ‘reform’ agenda for investor-state arbitration. The reforms are remarkable in line with the big business lobby agenda.
Today, WikiLeaks released the secret draft text for the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) Financial Services Annex, which covers 50 countries and 68.2%1 of world trade in services. The US and the EU are the main proponents of the agreement, and the authors of most joint changes, which also covers cross-border data flow. In a significant anti-transparency manoeuvre by the parties, the draft has been classified to keep it secret not just during the negotiations but for five years after the TISA enters into force.
Only a deep, structural reform of US chemicals legislation can be the basis of regulatory trans-Atlantic cooperation, writes Baskut Tuncak. Anything less is a stalling tactic.